Man allegedly breaks front windshield of sports car

A man with a prior conviction has been arrested after video footage from a surveillance camera allegedly caught him using a metal bar to break the front windshield of a sports car in the parking lot of an apartment in Chalan Kanoa.

Lucas Taitano Manglona, 42, was arrested for criminal mischief and was taken before Superior Court Associate Judge Joseph N. Camacho set Manglona’s cash bail at $3,000 in a bail hearing last Friday morning.

Assistant attorney general Samantha Vickery appeared for the government. The court appointed a private counsel, Marcia Schultz, for Manglona as there is conflict with the Office of the Public Defender to represent him.

Preliminary hearing will be on Aug. 24 at 2:30pm.

Police detective Freddie Guerrero stated in his report that the Department of Public Safety dispatched police officers to Tasi Homes Apartment last Wednesday at 4:04pm after receiving a report of a criminal mischief incident.

Guerrero said a responding police officer saw that a gray 370Z Nissan sedan in the parking lot has two punctured holes on the front windshield. The officer also saw a metal pipe left on the hood of the vehicle.

The officer viewed the surveillance footage of the incident and identified the suspect as Manglona, who was also involved in previous criminal cases. At 4:44pm that same day, police located Manglona at the nearby Sugar Dock and arrested him.

Later that night, the owner of the car, who is currently in China and was informed by the apartment’s staff, contacted the police and stated that he bought the car from Joeten Motors. Police learned from Joeten Motors that the front windshield of a 370Z sedan costs $1,732.

Guerrero said that, based on his review of the apartment’s surveillance footage, Manglona, who was shirtless and carrying a metal bar, walked into the inner parking lot of Tasi Homes, then threw the metal bar to the front windshield of the sedan, and then left.

A witness notified the apartment’s management about the incident.

In May 2016, Camacho sentenced Manglona to three years imprisonment after he pleaded guilty to burglary for breaking into a house of a couple in San Vicente and stealing a couple’s money.

At that 2016 sentencing, Camacho expressed concern that there appears to be no meaningful way to provide mental health care to defendants with mental illness and/or disability in the CNMI criminal justice system.

The judge said he is faced with a predicament putting in prison Manglona, a then-38-year-old mentally ill person with the mental age of a 10-year-old boy, without the proper mental health professionals or a hospital that releases a patient with a history of violence.

When Manglona was 14 years old, he reportedly suffered serious head injuries in an auto accident.