77
JAMM AQUINO / JAQUINO@STARADVERTISER.COM
Honolulu police secured Banyan Street after a shooting that occurred at the Samoa-Tokelau 7th Day Adventist Church on Saturday in Kalihi.
A shooting just above a crowded Kalihi church courtyard injured a man who had just been baptized this afternoon, witnesses said.
Taleni Asuega said he had just arrived at the church when he heard a loud bang and saw that his uncle had been shot near a second-floor classroom at the Samoa Tokelau Seventh-Day Adventist Church on Banyan Street in Kalihi.
The shooting happened just after his uncle, Tali Talitonu, had been baptized in a mass celebration. Anywhere from 60 to 100 people, including many children, were spilling out into the courtyard when the shot was fired, Asuega said.
Paramedics treated a 60-year-old man for a gunshot wound to the back and took him to the hospital in stable condition, Emergency Medical Services reported.
A church elder, Tony Williams, 57, is being called a hero for his quick action in grabbing the shooter’s gun hand, pointing the weapon away from the victim and the crowd, and disarming her.
“As soon as I heard the bang, I turned around and he already had her,” said Sam Tauolo, a church member who was also baptized today. “The church (service) had just ended, so everybody was coming out. Anybody could have been hit.”
Asuega and Tauolo said the woman who fired the shot was also a member of the congregation. They said they didn’t know what prompted the violence.
Police took her away and kept Banyan Street closed for several hours, only letting residents and church members in, while detectives investigated the scene.
Was the shooter practicing her religious beliefs?
I don’t know but I wouldn’t go to this Church until they work it out.
Garrans some kind of domestic dispute. Love Triangle
No she was not. This might be a matter of domestic violence? A spurned wife? Scary that nothing seems to be safe out here anymore.
Scorned woman ?
Matthew 3:11 “I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire”
Who… Allie ???
The dangers of religion; and I thought churches were ” safe ”.
seems nothing is sacred enough or safe these days.
Church’s are like “soft targets”
“Churches safe” ???!!!
Ask those that have been sexually abused by the men-of-the-cloth and the cover-up by their superiors.
Churches have pedophiles priests, greedy pastors, adulterous pastors, members who worship with false humility and deception, cliques, backstabbers, slanderers, gossipers, liars, accusers, abusers, troublemakers, wolves in sheep clothing, etc. Its what goes on after the services end when they take off there masks and they sin in secret, and come back to church again. We live in a fallen world and broken world, and the churches with all its members are also fallen.
Many people who go to church commit sins. They confess and are forgiven. Then they can go out and commit another sin.
Which one are you?
google, I agree 100% with you. That’s why I left the church. Too many phonies for me. At the end of the day, the phonies will say it’s all about faith, that they believe in Jesus Christ, and that faith is what guarantees them heaven after life. I have evolved my thinking. I say there has to be a god or gods. The world is too complex to have evolved from nothing. Someone has to be behind it all. Such a god would also be capable of creating a heaven and hell. But that heaven woudl be for the people who did good in the wolrd, who lived positive lives. Nor for those who guessed the correct god.
Pink, you left your church for your personal reasons. Go find yourself and if you choose to, find your g(G)od.
google, I heard a sermon on Christian radio last week where the pastor said the #1 reaosn why people leave the church is “tepidness” in the churchgoers. He used that word “tepid”. To encourage his flock to actually live the word. Not just say “yeah, yeah, yeah…” at church sermons. After 5 years in church, I realized there was nothing special about churchgoers. Same people as the non-churchgoers. Every church has the true 20% who try to do it the right way. The rest are phonies using church as a social club.
The “Church of Christ” in Honolulu is legit all the way. The phonies fall away real quick.
are you attending still?
No, I no longer believe in God. I do believe that god/s created earth. Too complex for there not to be a God. Who knows who the true God is? Nobody ever met him. Then came back to earth to share the experience.
PinkSushi, look up what “turtles all the way down” means as it relates to the infinite regress problem in cosmology. It clarifies why all religions and belief in a god, gods, or some “prime mover” is always, ultimately, a matter of faith.
@ Google – There’s always room for one more in a church. You should seek one out.
Well, obviously the baptism worked, or he’d be dead.