Kahuku High School senior’s family no stranger to tragedy

Eighteen-year-old Ku Primacio would have been celebrating his 19th birthday two weeks from now, but instead eerily shared the same fate as his young mother and grandmother.

The Kahuku High School senior was fatally injured Tuesday in an early morning crash in Hauula, less than 100 yards from their Hauula home, his uncle estimated.

“Tragedy isn’t something that is too foreign for us,” said Primacio’s uncle Vonn Chee.

When Primacio was just 4 years old in 2003, his 23-year-old mother died under similar circumstances “not even a mile from the house,” said Chee, his mother’s brother.

His grandmother also died in a car crash in Punaluu a mile from the house. She was just 17, but had already had Primacio’s mother and a son, Kaimana Chee, currently a chef in Maryland and winner of a January 2016 episode of TV cooking show “Cutthroat Kitchen.”

Primacio was a front-seat passenger in his cousin’s Toyota pickup truck when, at about 4:20 a.m., it skidded a few hundred feet as it traveled east along Hauula Homestead Road, hit a large tree and flipped over upon impact, said Lt. Andre Peters of the Honolulu Police Department’s Traffic Division.

Police said speed and alcohol were factors in the crash, and no one in the vehicle was wearing seat belts at the time.

Honolulu firefighters extricated the three occupants trapped inside the pickup.

Emergency Medical Services transported Primacio in critical condition to Kahuku Hospital, where he died.

Paramedics also transported Primacio’s cousin, 27, and his 22-year-old aunt to The Queen’s Medical Center in critical condition, but their conditions improved to serious.

Primacio’s cousin, released Wednesday afternoon, had a minor brain bleed but no brain damage, Chee said. Primacio’s aunt remained hospitalized with broken ribs, punctured lungs and small spinal fractures, he said.

“My sister was the first one out,” Chee said. “She crawled out, got out and called the police,” adding that neighbors awoke when they heard the crash and rendered aid.

Primacio lived in his mother’s family home together with the cousin, aunt and others.

“After his mom passed away, his dad took it hard and wasn’t in the picture for a few years,” said Chee, 23. “At that time, Ku and his four sisters came to live with us. … He and I grew up like brothers. I make sure he’s ready for school and pick him up.”

Family members are supporting one another, staying at the hospital 24/7 since Tuesday to ensure that his sister and cousin are OK, he said.

Chee, who coaches paddling at Kahuku High School, where Primacio was on the team, said, “The kids who paddle with me are taking it the hardest. They can’t go to class. He’s not there. It’s been tough for a lot of kids.”

He said he hopes the accident will serve as a lesson for the students.

Primacio also played football and rugby, but dropped out of football to take a part-time job bagging groceries at Tamura’s in Hauula to pay for braces.

“He was just an all-around good kid, always smiling, always positive,” his uncle said. “Even if kids got to spend a short time with him, they have definitely been touched.”

The paddling community will hold a memorial for Primacio on Saturday morning at Keehi Lagoon between races.

Police have initiated negligent homicide and negligent injury investigations.

This is the fourth traffic fatality on Oahu compared to one at the same time last year.