FilAm’s bail raised to $1.5-M in murder of own son

CHICAGO – A Filipino-American’s bail was raised on Monday to $1.5-M, after being found guilty of killing his 19-year-old son in Hawaii two years. Following the raised bail, former newspaper employee Jose D. Antonio Sr., 47, is due in court on August 11 to turn over his Philippine passport to his lawyer Philip Henry Lowenthal, who is already in possession of his U.S. passport. Antonio is in detention at the Maui Community Correctional Center, and faces mandatory life imprisonment with a minimum parole date after 20 years. The state of Hawaii has no death penalty. Initially held on a $350,000 bond, Antonio was charged with two counts of murder in the second degree for killing his son Jose “JR" Jr. with a semi-automatic firearm, in a fatal confrontation that began with an argument over a video game cord on Dec. 16, 2008 in their Kahului home. When state prosecutor, Melinda Kathleen Mendes, raised the possibility of Antonio jumping bail and fleeing to the Philippines, Second Circuit Judge Joel August raised the bail to $1-M. But during the reading of the verdict last July 20, Judge August further raised the bail to $1.5 and ordered the confiscation of his passport. In the bench trial of the case, the court employed an Ilocano interpreter for the benefit of Antonio, who is believed to be from the Ilocos region in the Philippines. A few hours before the shooting, Antonio’s wife, Zenaida, confronted him about going to the Philippines with another woman. According to The Maui News, later that evening, the elder Antonio had been drinking with relatives and friends in the garage of the main house. He and his son then had an argument over a video-game cord running from a living room computer to the son's bedroom, where he was playing an online game. The father had repeatedly asked the son to remove the cord, saying someone might trip over it. The son then asked his father about the $1,400 borrowed partly from him to settle gambling debts. At one point, the father slapped his son and both threw money at each other that the father tried to repay the son. The son lifted one end of a couch and punched a hole in a closet during the confrontation. The father pulled out the video-game cord twice that night, breaking it the second time. Antonio said he heard his son swear in his bedroom when the cord broke. Antonio testified that he was scared when he went into his bedroom, got and loaded his gun and went outside. He said his son had kicked open the screen door, swearing, and had a hand on the father's neck before he fired. His son sustained five gunshot wounds. Antonio, a former pressman of The Maui News, drove away from the house on board his truck. He gave himself up to the Wailuku Police Station shortly afterward. Court record shows that Antonio was born in the Philippines. He became a U.S. citizen in 1991. Antonio’s lawyer argued that his client should either be acquitted or found guilty of a lesser charge of manslaughter based on the evidence that he was under extreme mental or emotional disturbance at the time of the shooting.—CGL/JV, GMANews.TV