Police on Monday were still investigating a crash involving a police-subsidized vehicle that cut power to more than 1,000 customers last week in Hawaii Kai.
The crash happened about 4:40 a.m. Thursday on Lunalilo Home Road near Kaiser High School.
Honolulu Police Department spokeswoman Michelle Yu said the driver of the SUV veered off the road and onto the sidewalk before plowing into the side of a Hawaiian Electric Co. structure.
She said a 20-year HPD veteran assigned to the Criminal Investigation Division was involved in the collision, and his police powers have been restricted. He was off duty at the time.
No serious injuries were reported and no arrests have been made, she said.
HPD opened a criminal investigation into whether someone fled the scene of the crash and also an administrative investigation into the incident, Yu said. When asked if the officer was driving the SUV, Yu said that was under investigation.
Hawaii Kai resident Jane Thompson, who saw the aftermath of the collision, said she heard the crash and went outside, where she saw police and firefighters inspecting the building that housed the HECO equipment, trying to determine how to get in. Then a man opened the building’s door from the inside, walked out, and said, “I’m okay.”
Thompson said she assumed the man was the driver because no one else was around.
R. Patrick McPherson, a Honolulu defense attorney who has handled thousands of DUI cases, said police would need evidence that the officer was the driver to arrest him. He did not have details about the case and spoke in general terms.
“Unless they can put the person behind the wheel of the car at the time of the accident, they have to do an investigation,” he said. “That’s probably what they did or are doing.”
He noted that the investigation can continue away from the scene.
Darren Pai, HECO spokesman, said about 1,700 customers were left in the dark after the crash because the SUV drove into a cinder-block structure that houses equipment for managing the area’s electrical system. He said the equipment is not overhead because the power lines in Hawaii Kai are underground.
Seven hours after the crash, about 700 customers were still without power, and the last customers had power restored by 4 p.m., according to HECO’s Twitter account. A photo on the Twitter page showed the SUV halfway inside the small structure.
HECO did not have a damage estimate for the crash.
HPD asked anyone with information to call police, or CrimeStoppers at 955-8300 or *CRIME on a cellphone.
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Correction: Jane Thompson says she assumed the man who emerged from the Hawaiian Electric structure near Lunalilo Home Road was the driver of the SUV that had crashed into the building Thursday. But Thompson says she did not see the accident, only its aftermath, so could not be certain, and she also did not know that the man was a police officer. An earlier version of this story and in Tuesday’s print edition reported that she “maintains the officer was driving” the SUV.
