{"id":646820,"date":"2026-05-16T14:19:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T14:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/646820\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T14:19:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T14:19:08","slug":"defense-attorney-explains-why-rock-was-hurled-at-endangered-monk-seal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/646820\/","title":{"rendered":"Defense attorney explains why rock was hurled at endangered monk seal"},"content":{"rendered":"

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – The Hawaii attorney representing the monk seal harassment suspect<\/a> is Myles Breiner. On Friday, he explained Igor Lytvynchuk\u2019s side of the story.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were two large turtles in the water. When he threw the rock, the intention was to scare the seal away. He had no idea, again, the significance of monk seals. He frankly didn\u2019t know we had seals in Hawaii,\u201d Breiner said.<\/p>\n

Breiner said Lytvynchuk, 38, has previously dealt with sea lions as a fisherman in Washington, and knows how aggressive they can be. So when he and his wife were admiring turtles in the area, he wanted to scare the seal off.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe assumed that when he saw the seal, the monk seal, pushing the turtles off of the rocks, that he was doing something good by scaring it away,\u201d Breiner said.<\/p>\n

When asked if he was apologetic at all, Breiner responded, \u201cOh, absolutely. He\u2019s devastated at the notion that people thought he wanted to injure the seal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Regarding Lytvynchuk\u2019s comments that he was \u201crich enough to pay the fines,\u201d Breiner said his client is not a wealthy man, but was rather under pressure of the moment.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt comes off sounding like he\u2019s bragging or being arrogant. OK, and that was possibly in response to people yelling at him and he was embarrassed, so he doubled down,\u201d Breiner said.<\/p>\n

After the May 5 video surfaced, Lytvynchuk was assaulted by another man. Breiner said they know who he is, but they will not be pressing charges.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was beaten pretty badly. There were no broken bones, but yeah, he had welts all over his back, his head, shoulders,\u201d Breiner said.<\/p>\n

Previous Coverage<\/p>\n

Other details about his client were shared, with Breiner saying Ukraine native is a naturalized U.S. citizen. He was ordered to surrender his passport following a federal court appearance in Seattle Thursday<\/a>, and is exploring the idea of giving back by donating to wildlife protection efforts.<\/p>\n

But how this will play out in court from here on out remains to be seen.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s going to pay the price. We\u2019re not going into court and saying no, he didn\u2019t do this, but there\u2019s always an explanation,\u201d Breiner said.<\/p>\n

Lytvnchuk is set to appear before a judge in federal court here in Honolulu on May 27. <\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 Hawaii News Now. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – The Hawaii attorney representing the monk seal harassment suspect is Myles Breiner. On Friday, he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":646821,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[94109,86966,79,201],"class_list":["post-646820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-lahaina","tag-monk-seal","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/646821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}