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Hawaii News

Deaths stun quiet neighborhood

Michael Tsai

A 27-year-old man stabbed his 33-year-old girlfriend to death outside their Kaneohe home yesterday afternoon then apparently drove up the H-3 freeway and jumped to his death, police said.

The incident occurred shortly after 12:30 p.m. and sent shock waves along quiet Kapunahala Road, where the couple shared an upstairs rental unit .

Honolulu Police Department spokesman Lt. David Kamai said the woman apparently left the residence Friday night following an argument with her boyfriend and returned yesterday with her mother to pick up her belongings.

When the woman and her mother arrived, they found some of the belongings damaged and called police to file a criminal property damage complaint.

While police were en route to the house, the suspect struck the victim’s mother and chased the homicide victim out to the street, where he stabbed her multiple times, Kamai said.

Kamai said the suspect fled in the victim’s Toyota SUV, later pulling over along the H-3 above Kaneohe. A witness told police that the man jumped over a railing, landing about 200 feet on the pavement below.

Police located the man’s body below the highway, near the corner of Lolii Street and Puoni Place in the Haiku Village neighborhood.

He was pronounced dead at the scene at 2:15 p.m, according to city Emergency Medical Services spokesman Bryan Cheplic.

The stabbing victim was taken to Castle Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead. Her mother was treated for minor injuries at the scene.

The identities of the victim and suspect were not immediately released. But longtime Kapunahala Road resident Corazon Villasista said the woman killed, whom she identified only as "Sidney," was her tenant of two years.

She said the suspect’s name was not on the lease but he had been staying at the rental unit "for a while."

Villasista said the victim worked at King Intermediate School and had an adolescent daughter, who apparently was not at the residence yesterday.

Villasista and her husband returned from church to find their home surrounded by yellow police tape.

"It’s sad," she said. "She was very nice. She always had friends coming over and they’d go out. I never heard any trouble."

Police said there was no prior record of domestic abuse or disturbance involving the couple.

All along Kapunahala Road, neighbors gathered in yards and carports to talk about the incident.

Winchell Lee, 74, who lives just down the road from where the stabbing occurred, said such violence is unusual in a neighborhood where he and many of his neighbors are the original owners of their homes.

"I’ve been here for 46 years," Lee said. "It’s a pretty quiet neighborhood. We’ve had a few burglaries but nothing like this.

"It’s sad that this had to happen," he said. "There’s such stress on people in their jobs or their relationships, and it’s really tough that people resolve it this way."

Neighbor Andrew Blanco said he was inside his house yesterday afternoon when he heard a woman screaming. "Initially, I didn’t think much of it until all the dogs started barking," Blanco said. "It lasted for a few minutes."

When Blanco went outside later, he saw police standing around the victim’s body in the middle of the street.

This is the second murder-suicide in a month on Oahu. On Aug. 20, Kristine Cass, 46, and her daughter Saundra, 13, were shot to death in their Makiki home by the mother’s former boyfriend, Clayborne Conley.

Conley, a former Hawaii National Guardsman with a history of violent behavior and mental instability, shot himself after killing the mother and daughter.

Reporters Gordon Pang and Gregg K. Kakesako contributed to this story.

 

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