A man accused of slapping a man who was tailgating him was found not guilty of charges on Wednesday in Superior Court.<\/p>\n
At the conclusion of the bench trial, Associate Judge Joseph Camacho found 30-year-old Ryan Due\u0148as not guilty of charges filed against him, saying that Due\u0148as\u2019 recollection of events and his testimony was more credible than the victim\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Camacho said he found numerous inconsistencies in the testimony of the victim. <\/p>\n
According to Camacho, the victim\u2019s version of the events proved that he was actually aggressively tailgating Due\u0148as, even after Due\u0148as made the effort to speed up and create a distance between his white pickup truck and the brown pickup truck that was following him.<\/p>\n
The Superior Court also ruled in favor of Due\u0148as and concluded that he was merely using self-defense to repel the victim when he slapped him. <\/p>\n
The Superior Court also concluded that the government failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Duenas committed the offense of assault and battery and disturbing the peace. <\/p>\n
On or about Feb. 15, 2018, Duenas allegedly slapped another man in his vehicle for driving too close behind him, allegedly nearly hitting the back of his vehicle, in Chalan Kiya Drive. <\/p>\n
During the bench trial, Due\u0148as testified that he thought the victim was falling asleep and he was also scared that the victim was a threat. <\/p>\n
Due\u0148as told the court that after he got out of his vehicle and confronted the victim, the victim allegedly threw a punch that Due\u0148as dodged and he retaliated with a slap to the right side of the victim\u2019s face. <\/p>\n
According to the victim\u2019s testimony, he did not throw the first punch and that he was just sitting in his vehicle when Due\u0148as approached him. <\/p>\n
The victim said that Due\u0148as had come equipped with a machete but Due\u0148as said he had a machete in his vehicle but he did not bring it with him when he confronted the victim.<\/p>\n
A witness of the prosecution, Due\u0148as\u2019 brother, said that he did not see a punch thrown by Due\u0148as nor did he see Due\u0148as back up as to dodge a punch during the altercation. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A man accused of slapping a man who was tailgating him was found not guilty…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[14939,88],"class_list":["post-286961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-chalan-kiya-drive","tag-superior-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286961\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}