Devastated boyfriend waits for victim to stir

Michael Mareko-Peneueta, who watched helplessly last week as his girlfriend, Alisha Brown, was struck by a car in Ewa Beach, has spent day and night at the hospital waiting for her to awaken from an induced coma.

“I talk to my girlfriend every morning,” he said. “I tell her every night who visited, how bad I’m sorry for her, what she went through. She’s so innocent, she’s so young. … Because she’s so strong, she’s fighting through this. All I can do is be strong for her.”

The two 18-year-olds, together since the eighth grade and 2015 graduates of Campbell High School, were with a group of young people at 3 a.m. Tuesday when the driver of a silver Hyundai sedan plowed into the crowd.

Brown, a Chaminade University student majoring in criminology, was critically injured, with a fractured skull and swelling of the brain but no brain injury, according to Mareko-Peneueta. Because she was in so much pain, doctors induced a coma, he said.

Since then she has been improving, he added.

The suspected driver, Malik Morton, 20, was charged Saturday with first-degree attempted murder, two counts of second-degree attempted murder and first-degree terroristic threatening. A 17-year-old boy also was hit, and was hospitalized in stable condition.

The former Leilehua High School football player, who recently returned to Hawaii from Fayetteville, N.C., turned himself in to police Thursday. His bail was set at $1 million.

Mareko-Peneueta said of the arrest, “It’s a big relief, actually. I can sleep a little bit better knowing justice has been served. The only thing now is I wait on my girlfriend.”

On Saturday he identified the car, which was recovered by police Friday.

Meanwhile the mayhem keeps replaying in his mind, and he said he feels guilty that Brown was there only to see him.

The gathering Monday night and early Tuesday was intended to be six close friends spending one last time together at the home of one of the friends. The family had moved out and the house was nearly empty.

But a former schoolmate, celebrating her 18th birthday, was kicked off the Barbers Point campgrounds. She heard about their gathering and “brought the party there,” he said.

Her guests, including Morton, were strangers to them, and they stayed out on the street, drinking beer, Ma­reko-Peneueta said.

“We didn’t kick them out. We said, ‘If you’re going to drink, drink inside the house,’” Mareko-Peneueta said. “They were throwing beers on the ground. We did not want people to call the cops.”

“My friend told them, ‘Come in the house or you have to leave.’ That’s where the argument started,” he said.

Meanwhile, Brown came to the house to join him. He suddenly noticed no one was in the house, and went out to check what was going on.

”I told her before I left, ‘Stay here. Don’t worry. I’m gonna go look.’ She said, ‘OK, I’ll wait.’”

Unbeknownst to him, she followed.

Outside, a fight had broken out, and one of Morton’s friends was knocked out.

Then he saw the silver sedan.

“The driver turned around a good distance from us, and he came in flying 35-40 mph from where he was at. I never did see nothing like that.”

Mareko-Peneueta said the car “came zigzagging” and that people were scampering out of the way.

“All I could see was headlights being covered by bodies being whacked,” he said. “It was just brutal. He tried hitting me but he missed. I kicked the door.

“He went towards my girlfriend, and I didn’t know she was behind me,” he said.

The driver could have swerved to avoid her, but “instead he turned all the way right into her. All I seen is her go flying in the air, and I seen her flip twice. She landed on the ground on her head.”

His voice breaking, Mareko-Peneueta said, “I was supposed to be her protector. I made a commitment to her, but I couldn’t stop that car. I couldn’t stop that car.”

Through tears he said, “I see my girlfriend lying in my arms. All I could do was scream. … All I want is my girlfriend to wake up. That’s all I‘m waiting for. I don’t know what kind of person — what kind of heart, what kind of mind — I don’t know who can do something like that.”

Mareko-Peneueta said he reached out to others through social media looking for evidence and videos, and messaged and called the driver’s friends.

“I know I can’t be angry,” he said. One of Morton’s friends “was crying for me,” he said, adding, “He actually told me the boy’s last name, and within hours he turned himself in.”

Brown’s family has also been at her bedside and pacing the halls at the Queen’s Medical Center. Her father declined to comment Friday.

“If you could just sit in this hallway, you would understand how much sadness, how much confusion and hurt that all of our families are going through,” Ma­reko-Peneueta said. “Everybody’s crying, the brother, the mom, the dad. I can hear her mom screaming in the hallways at night.

“Nobody should have to go through this, especially her,” he said, referring to his girlfriend.

Shirley Peneueta, Ma­reko-Peneueta’s mother, emphasized, “We are not promoting underage drinking. Whatever happened that night, I have no idea how that came about. But that girl was not there because of that. Her concern was looking for my son, and, unfortunately, wrong place, wrong time.”

She added, “We encourage no retaliation. Let this be a lesson learned for all the young ones out there of what could happen.”

Anyone wishing to help with Brown’s medical expenses can go online to a GoFundMe account set up by her cousin Olivia Gomez.