ON THE AFTERNOON of May 10, 1991, Dale Akiki sat on his regular homeward-bound bus from downtown San Diego, chatting with his seatmate, a mentally retarded boy. As the bus approached his stop Akiki said goodbye, gathered up his sackful of aluminum cans, and stepped to the curb. Suddenly, a voice from behind bellowed: “Halt! Drop the cans!”
His fellow passengers, some of whom had ridden the bus with Akiki for years, must have been startled, to say the least. Akiki himself didn’t know whether it was a sad mistake, or a bad joke. “The guy on the bus had partners in a car outside. He handcuffed me and put me in the back seat,” Akiki, 35, said recently in an interview at the San Diego County Jail.
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