Woman killed in busy year for officer-involved shootings

A 26-year-old Hilo woman was shot and killed early Friday morning by Hawaii island police officers who said their lives were in danger as she repeatedly rammed a stolen vehicle into their police SUV in the Puna District.

The woman was identified as Ashley Elisna Grammer, an ex-convict and fugitive who was being sought on two $50,000 warrants for violating her probation.

It was the fourth officer-involved shooting on the Big Island this year, and it follows a police-­involved shooting in Honolulu Sunday, the 11th of the year on Oahu.

The three officers involved in the shooting at 1 a.m. Friday near Hawaiian Beaches were placed on administrative leave, and police launched a criminal investigation into the matter, as well as an administrative investigation by the department’s Office of Professional Standards.

All three actions are standard procedure in any officer-involved shooting, police said.

According to a police account of the incident, Puna District patrol officers were conducting routine beat checks when they came upon a 1998 Toyota 4-Runner parked on a narrow dirt trail near the ocean at Honolulu Landing on Beach Road.

As the officers were getting out of their vehicle to investigate, the 4-Runner suddenly reversed and slammed into the front end of the police Chevy Tahoe, knocking one officer out of the vehicle. The 4-Runner then began moving back and forth, ramming the police vehicle numerous times.

“The suspect’s continuing course of action placed two officers who were then on foot and in close proximity in great danger of being hit or run over,” the report said.

All three officers fired at and into the vehicle, and the driver was struck and later died of her injuries at the scene.

A 22-year-old female passenger in the 4-Runner was not injured in the incident, police said.

Investigators found that the 4-Runner had phony license plates and later discovered it had been reported stolen on Sunday from the parking lot of a Hilo business.

The three officers who fired on the vehicle have seven, three and less than one year of service . None were injured.

Anyone who witnessed the incident is asked to contact Detective William Brown at 961-2384.

The fatality was the fourth officer-involved shooting on the Big Island this year. Three months earlier, an intensive four-day manhunt for Justin Waiki, the man who gunned down Hawaii island police officer Bronson K. Kaliloa, ended July 20 in a shootout at South Point that left the suspect dead and two others, including a second police officer, wounded.

On June 27, a 10-year veteran of the police force fired approximately 11 shots at a man in Panaewa who reached into his pickup and pulled out a “a long, dark-colored object,” according to a police report. The man got away.

On May 20, two officers shot 13 times at Joseph Paul Branco, 32, after he ignored their order to halt and allegedly drove a stolen pickup toward them in upper Puna. Branco was not injured.

On Oahu, a 39-year-old man who was fatally shot by police near downtown Hono­lulu Sunday was identified as Tison Dinney. The Honolulu Medical Examiner’s office said Dinney died of a gunshot wound to his torso.

So far in 2018, the Honolulu Police Department has had 11 officer-involved shootings, six of which resulted in a fatality. That shatters the highest recent full-year counts in 2013 and 2014, with four officer-involved shootings resulting in two fatalities each year.

Dinney, the latest fatality, was shot at about 8:45 a.m. Sunday near the state Department of Health building across the street from the state Capitol on Beretania Street. Police said he struck an officer with a machete, and another officer responded by firing his weapon four times.

The officer who was struck by the machete was wearing a protective 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 officers 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 officers summoned the police after pepper spray didn’t get Dinney to give up his weapons.