This undated photo provided by the Maui Police Department shows Randall Toshio Saito. (Maui Police Department via AP)
HONOLULU (AP) — Hawaii authorities on Tuesday were searching for a man who escaped from the state’s psychiatric hospital outside Honolulu and flew to Maui.
Randall Saito, who was found not guilty of a 1979 murder by reason of insanity, left the Hawaii State Hospital at 9 a.m. Sunday and failed to return.
Maui County police said Saito flew to Maui shortly after he left the hospital, but they didn’t know where he was.
The 59-year-old is 6 feet (1.8 meters) tall and 220 pounds. He has black hair and brown eyes.
Saito was committed to the hospital in 1981. He was acquitted by reason of insanity of the murder of Sandra Yamashiro, whom he shot and stabbed repeatedly at a Honolulu shopping mall.
Defense attorneys sought to have him released in 2000. But prosecutors objected, saying Saito fit the criteria of a classic serial killer.
A 2002 article by the Honolulu Advertiser reported Saito picked his victim at random.
A court in 1993 denied Saito’s request for conditional release, saying Saito still suffered from sexual sadism and necrophilia just as when he was committed to the hospital 12 years earlier, the Honolulu Advertiser reported.
In 2015, a judge denied a motion for Saito to be granted passes to leave the hospital’s grounds without an escort.
By AUDREY McAVOY
Source: AP
