Statement from Bruce Fehring, Kaloko survivor:       November 28, 2014

"I have heard from the media that James Pflueger has been released from jail by State Prison Head Ted Sakai after serving 1.5 months of an already meager 7 month sentence he was given for 7 felony counts of manslaughter because he filled in the emergency spillway of the Kaloko Dam on Kauai, which subsequently breached, causing the deaths of 7 innocent people plus an unborn child.

"I find it quite incredible that one State employee, not a judge, can unilaterally make such a decision without any notification to the families of the victims, and perhaps not even the State Prosecutor’s office. I understand that Mr. Sakai relied on the opinion of one corrections department physician, concluding that the state was unable to medically care for Pflueger, 89, who will have permission to leave his house only for medical care.

"What!? Released from jail when he does not even require hospitalization? No opportunity to have an independent medical exam of this criminal? Released to his home, where he is likely further from a hospital than he was at Kauai Community Correctional Center, just a few miles away from Wilcox Hospital! Released to his home, to sit in his easy chair, watch TV, surf the internet, eat gourmet meals, drink alcoholic beverages, and cuddle with his girlfriend in his king sized bed with silk sheets and feather pillows.

"He should be back where he belongs, sitting on hard chairs and laying on a hard bed in a jail cell with a male roommate, with steel bars and rules to follow and guards to obey.

"To me, the father of a victim, father-in-law of another, grandfather of a third and friend or acquaintance to all the rest, this latest development in the saga of Pflueger’s old-boy manipulation of the justice system stinks like corruption and smells like big money."