Man charged in attack on officer similar to prior incident

A 19-year-old man who was shot in the head and chest after allegedly hitting a Honolulu police officer with a stolen vehicle earlier this month is on probation for an eerily similar incident.

An Oahu grand jury returned an indictment Tuesday charging Lenson Sos with trying to kill a police officer, burglary and driving a stolen vehicle. Circuit Judge Colette Garibaldi set bail for Sos at $500,000.

Sos is in custody at Oahu Community Correctional Center, after undergoing surgery at a trauma hospital.

Following the Feb. 2 incident that left Sos in critical condition, Honolulu police Chief Susan Ballard said two officers fired their weapons after Sos backed into one of them while trying to flee in a stolen minivan.

The minivan’s owner had reported that someone had broken into his home on Tantalus, stole the keys to the minivan and drove off in it. Police spotted the vehicle on the freeway and later located it on Kuhaulua Street in Waipahu with a driver and four passengers inside.

Police said officers approached the vehicle and ordered the driver to turn off the ignition. Ballard said the driver instead reversed the vehicle, hitting an officer and police vehicle.

The officer who was hit, a 26-year-veteran of the Honolulu Police Department, suffered bruises to his rib that were not life-threatening.

Sos already has been convicted of burglary, criminal property damage and driving a stolen vehicle. He pleaded no contest to the charges last May. Circuit Judge Paul B.K. Wong sentenced Sos in July to four years of probation.

In that incident, police said Sos entered a McCully apartment through an unlocked door in June 2016, stole the keys to a car, drove off in the vehicle and picked up three friends he was with before the burglary. Officers spotted the sedan at Washington Intermediate School. When they tried to block the car, Sos rammed one of the officers’ subsidized police vehicles and fled.

Officers found Sos hiding inside a parked van not far from where the stolen car had come to a stop after crashing head-on into a truck.

Sos was 17 years old at the time of the McCully incident and was initially charged as a juvenile. State Family Court Judge Mark R. Browning waived the court’s jurisdiction over Sos in September 2016, allowing an Oahu grand jury to charge Sos as an adult.