Pittsburgh man Benjamin Fleming pleads not responsible to manslaughter after lethal Hawaii trip battle – CBS Pittsburgh

HONOLULU (AP) – A Pittsburgh man pleaded not guilty Thursday when he strangled a college buddy he was vacationing with in Hawaii.

A judge ordered Benjamin Fleming, who was released on $ 250,000 bail, not to leave the Big Island without the court’s permission until his trial in August.

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(Photo: Hawaii Police Department)

Fleming was at a Kailua-Kona Airbnb last month with two friends he has known since college at Carnegie Mellon University, where they were MBA graduates in 2020.

Alexander Germany-Wald of Montclair, New Jersey, testified at a preliminary hearing for Fleming last week that her friend Abhishek Gupta, also from Pittsburgh, was “psychotically” drunk on her first night on the Big Island.

Deutschland-Wald said he took Gupta back to the rental where Gupta hit him. When Fleming returned to the apartment, he intervened by holding Gupta back, Germany-Wald said.

Gupta snored on the floor, but the other two men later noticed that he was stopping breathing, Germany-Wald said.

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An autopsy revealed that Gupta had been strangled.

Fleming told the judge he was now staying at a bed and breakfast in Captain Cook. His attorney, Christopher Eggert, filed a motion Thursday asking for Fleming’s bail to be lowered to $ 100,000 and permission to return to mainland America.

Eggert’s motion states that Fleming has “no previous crime conviction and no record of missing a court appearance.”

A hearing on the motion is scheduled for next week.

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