By MNG Staff
WAILUKU, Hawaii (MNG) — Celestial S.D. Cassman, a former Clear Lake High School honor student, volleyball player and cheerleader was known to Lake County friends as Dove.
A Maui County prosecuting attorney filed murder and kidnapping charges against Gerald W. Galaway Jr., 38, of Santa Cruz in connection with the Sept. 1 homicide of Santa Cruz attorney Cassman on an oceanfront cliff on Maui.
Cassman, 35, a UC Santa Cruz graduate who lived in the Seabright area, worked at the downtown Santa Cruz law firm Atchison, Barisone, Condotti & Kovacevich. The firm provides city attorney services for Santa Cruz, Capitola and other area cities.
Friends said Galaway, 38, was Cassman”s ex-boyfriend. The two had been staying together on Maui since the day before she died, police said.
Prosecuting Attorney John D. Kim said he filed the two felony charges Tuesday, but does not know when Galaway will be arraigned because of the injuries he suffered when he leaped off a cliff Thursday.
Thursday evening, about 6:30 p.m., two passersby reported seeing the two having some kind of dispute in a car along Nakalele Highway, Kim said. They called police, he said.
One witness also stopped to help and Galaway then dragged Cassman off to the side of the highway, he said.
When police arrived, Galaway hurled himself off the cliff.
Cassman was not visible when police arrived, Lt. Wayne Ibarra has said.
Police reported finding her body at the bottom of a cliff area at about 7:30 p.m., Ibarra said.
Galaway was injured in the fall and was calling for help, he said.
But police and other rescue crews could not reach him on the darkening evening and he swam to a rocky promontory, to which he clung before being plucked up by crews in a helicopter the next morning, authorities said.
Galaway has been in the hospital since he was detained, though his injuries are not life-threatening, police said.
Under Hawaii law, the second-degree murder charge carries a possible sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole, Kim said. First-degree murder involves special circumstances such as the murder of a judge, police officer or a person with a protective order or the killing of more than one person, he said.
The kidnapping charge, which alleges the kidnapping was done to commit another serious crime, carries a possible term of 20 years in prison, he said.
Kim said he did not know the cause of Cassman”s death. He said an autopsy was performed, but that he does not yet have the report.
