A compliance officer of the Department of Commerce has been found guilty of assaulting his common-law wife in front of their minor daughter at their home in Kagman last year.<\/p>\n
In a written judgment yesterday, Superior Court Associate Judge David A. Wiseman found Erwin Paul Togawa guilty of assault and disturbing the peace.<\/p>\n
Wiseman said the evidence in the case presented proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in the assault and disturbing the peace charges.<\/p>\n
The judge, however, acquitted the 41-year-old Togawa on a charge of disturbing the peace involving the child, after finding no proof beyond a reasonable doubt.<\/p>\n
Sentencing will be on April 23, 2014 at 1:30pm.<\/p>\n
The bench trial was held on Monday.<\/p>\n
It was supposed to be a jury trial, but a felony charge of assault with a dangerous weapon was later removed from the case. Assistant attorney general Margo Brown-Badawy dropped the charge as the Department of Public Safety could not locate the knife that was allegedly involved in the case.<\/p>\n
Police detective Melissa Bauleong had stated in her report that, according to the victim, Togawa pulled out a knife from his waist pouch, pointed it at her, and threatened to kill her on Jan. 29, 2013.<\/p>\n
The victim also told police that during an argument with Togawa on May 10, 2012, she took her daughter and walked out of the house. Togawa allegedly followed them on a car and threatened to run them over if they don\u2019t get inside the car. The victim said she later heard the car drive behind her, nearly hitting them.<\/p>\n
When police officers arrested Togawa at the Department of Commerce, they reportedly recovered from him a knife.<\/p>\n
Attorney Mark Hanson served as court-appointed counsel for Togawa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A compliance officer of the Department of Commerce has been found guilty of assaulting his…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[162,133,648],"class_list":["post-31332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-car","tag-run","tag-weapon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31332","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\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31332\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}