Jerome Abiley searched for his 64-year-old father, who had been living on the streets for roughly 20 years, and found him in May.
Abiley, one of 10 children, took his father, John, to his Makakilo home, got him cleaned up, and the two reconnected after 10 years. “It was nice to see my dad for the first time in a long time,” said Jerome Abiley, 36. “He lived with me for three weeks, and after that he wanted to go back to town.
“With him set in his ways” and wanting “to come and go as he pleased, walk where he pleased,” his father returned to the streets, Abiley said.
On Aug. 5 at 6:40 p.m., John Abiley was kicked and beaten while at a Liliha bus stop. He died of his injuries Aug. 11. He would have turned 65 on Saturday.
Police on Tuesday released a new sketch of Abiley’s assailant, based on a description from a second witness. The new description includes a tattoo on his right shoulder or biceps.
The suspect is a man in his 20s, 5 feet 10 inches to 6 feet tall, 160 pounds, with short, spiky brown hair. He was wearing a black tank top, black surfer shorts and Nike athletic shoes.
Abiley’s daughter Daraeanne King, 25, of Ventura, Calif., who had never met her father, flew to Honolulu Aug. 7 to get married, hoping to see him.
King told her brother, “I can’t believe (mine) will be the first one (wedding) he’ll be attending.”
Two days after her arrival, she received a call from her brother saying their father was in the hospital. “It caught me by surprise,” she said. “The first time I met my father and my brother was in the hospital.”
Jerome Abiley said seeing his father in the ICU was “horrible.”
“They had all kinds of tubes in him, breathing for him because the trauma was so bad,” he said. “His face was all fractured, his nose, his cheek. It was very hard seeing him like that.”
“I don’t wish that for anybody’s parents,” Abiley said. “How could a person do that to a person that was 64 years old, and a homeless man at that.”
John Abiley, nicknamed “Santa Claus” for his long white hair and beard, had friends and no enemies, his son said.
“I got him all cleaned up, took him to the barber’s,” he said. “He just didn’t want to live with me,” he said, although his door was always open to his father. “I still respect him even though he was out of my life for a lot of years. That was his wishes, to be out on the street.”
But he feared what might happen. “That was what I was afraid of, some young punks drinking and doing drugs, jumping him, but I couldn’t hold him.”
“He took away our dad’s life,” Abiley said of his father’s killer. “If they do catch him, I want him to get the max sentence.”
Born and raised in Papaikou on Hawaii island, John Abiley loved the outdoors and excelled in pig hunting and spear fishing, and fed his family that way.
“He was a good mechanic,” Jerome Abiley said. “He was the type of person to help people. If you were stuck on the side of the road, he would help you and wouldn’t charge no money.”
A niece, Florence Lovell, 44, of Hilo, said, “I think that is very cruel for someone to do that. He’s a quiet person and he doesn’t bother anybody.”
Lovell has fond memories of her uncle taking her, her siblings and cousins camping when they were children.
Jerome Abiley said he and his older sister will bring their father’s ashes to Hawaii island and scatter them in Papaikou.
