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Courtesy photo
The Honolulu Medical Examiner’s office identified today a 39-year-old man who was fatally shot by police near downtown Sunday as Tison Dinney.
The medical examiner’s said Dinney died of a gunshot wound to his torso. The manner of his death was ruled a homicide.
His hometown was not available, the medical examiner’s said.
Dinney was shot near the Department of Health, across the street from the State Capitol on Beretania Street, at about 8:45 a.m. Sunday. Police said he struck an officer with a machete, and another officer responded by firing his weapon four times, hitting Dinney in the torso and hand.
The officer who was struck by the machete was wearing a vest and wasn’t injured by the weapon, but he hit his head on a wall while trying to back away and was taken to a hospital, police said.
Before the Honolulu Police Department arrived, state deputy sheriffs responded to an argument between Dinney and another man and found Dinney with a machete and a pair of garden shears. Sheriffs called police after pepper spray didn’t get Dinney to give up his weapons.
Dinney was the sixth person fatally shot by HPD this year, the highest number of fatal police shootings on Oahu since 2013. It was also HPD’s 11th officer-involved shooting this year.
In previous years, there were two fatal police shootings on Oahu in 2017, 2014, and 2013. There was one fatal police shooting in 2016 and no fatal police shootings in 2015.
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