Clint Tizoc Fleishour

Defendant says he didn?t mean to kill roommate
By Debra Barayuga
Honolulu Star-Bulletin

Not a day goes by that he doesn't think about the man he shot and killed in a fit of anger, Falefia Moe said.

"Even I go sleep, I cannot sleep," said Moe, charged with second-degree murder in the death of roommate Clint Fleishour, 20, in April 1997. "The face always remind me of the whole thing."

Moe, 61, one of entertainer Danny Kaleikini's top fire dancers for more than 20 years, yesterday took the stand in his defense. He is also charged with second-degree attempted murder for shooting at another roommate, Leigh Josephson. Josephson was not injured.

Moe yesterday blamed himself for Fleishour's death, saying, "He could be my grandkid or son, and he's too young to die."

He said he only wanted to scare his roommates from the apartment.

Moe had come home one night and confronted Fleishour, asking him when he was going to leave. He said he had confronted Fleishour on previous occasions because he did not approve of the friends the younger man brought to the apartment.

Moe said Fleishour hit him above the left eye, and Moe was thrown to the floor and held down by Josephson after the confrontation.

When Josephson finally let him go, Moe said he went to his room and became angry when he looked into the mirror and saw blood flowing from a cut above his eye. "I was mad, really mad."

"I grab the gun 'cause I was mad," he said. He said he took the loaded gun from a golf bag in his room.

Defense attorney David Hayakawa asked Moe if he meant to kill anyone, and Moe answered, "No, sir."

Moe testified he walked into the living room and pointed the gun at the wall next to Josephson and fired two shots to scare him. When he spotted Fleishour running across his bedroom in the direction of a closet, he shot toward the younger man, "thinking he come after the gun or me," Moe said, unable to recall how many times he fired.

He went back to his room, realizing he may have hit Fleishour, then went onto the balcony of their seventh-floor apartment and tossed the gun over the side " 'cause I no like hurt anybody else," he said.

Then he checked on Fleishour and discovered the man's lifeless body inside the bedroom closet. "He's dead already," Moe said.

Prosecutor Randy Lee says Moe shot Fleishour after he hid in the closet, not when the younger man dove across his bedroom.

Testimony by the medical examiner on the angle of the shots that struck Fleishour contradicts the defendant's account of the shooting, Lee said.

Fleishour had been shot in the left chest and left thigh. A third shot hit him the left arm, which was raised as though he was trying to protect himself, and went through his left chest, the prosecutor said.