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A 51-year-old armed man held members of the same community “hostage” for the second time in two decades.
Police ended a 15-hour standoff with Wayman Kaua at his ex-girlfriend’s Pacific Palisades house by deploying “less-than-lethal” gas, prompting him to exit and surrender sometime before 11:30 p.m. Thursday, a Honolulu Police Department spokeswoman said in an email Friday.
Although the main artery — Komo Mai Drive — was reopened at 1 a.m. Friday, some residents could not return home until later Friday morning, after the investigation on Apoepoe Street was completed.
Some were unable to go to work or school or to return home to their families trapped inside the area of upper Pacific Palisades where Kaua was firing random shots throughout the day from an Apoepoe Street house.
Some residents stayed at the Hawaii Red Cross shelter set up at Pearl City District Park gym, which was opened up for residents and closed at 4 a.m.
For others it was more than an inconvenience. One woman trembled outside her house as she watched police arrive and run around a nearby home, and heard shots fired.
The 30-year-old woman, who asked not to be identified, said she caught the sound of Kaua’s gunfire.
She said he had begun shooting before police arrived, so she recognized the sound.
She felt “very scared and worried because I had my three kids inside,” she said. “We weren’t sure where the shots were coming from or who was shooting where.
“I went in the house, and I put my kids in a room with a concrete wall,” she said. “We felt safe.”
She had her three sons, ages 4 months, 2 years and 4 years old, along with her sister and her 2-year-old daughter.
Her mother was able to pick up her other two children, who couldn’t come home until 2 a.m. Friday.
The family gave refuge to neighbors, including an elderly woman in a wheelchair.
The 30-year-old recalled the 1998 incident, when she was just 9. She recalled not being able to go to school, but her family was together.
Arriving SWAT team members told residents to remain inside.
Police warned the public to take cover and refused to allow residents to leave their homes or to return home either by walking or driving in and around area streets.
Police, including SWAT team members, ran through yards. Using a bullhorn, police periodically ordered Kaua to come out and tried to coax him into giving himself up.
Kaua allegedly pointed a firearm at a police officer, who shot him, causing non- life-threatening injuries, police said. According to his daughter, he was shot in the stomach.
Emergency Medical Services personnel were on scene, and treated him after he exited the house for gunshot injuries and gas exposure, HPD spokeswoman Michelle Yu said.
Police arrested Kaua at 12:25 a.m. Friday at 2292 Apoepoe St. on suspicion of two counts of first-degree attempted murder of a law enforcement officer and fourth-degree criminal property damage.
He was taken to the hospital to be treated for his injuries.
Police initially responded to a report of gunshots fired at the home at about 8:40 a.m. Thursday.
Kaua shot his ex-girlfriend’s car but didn’t threaten or point the gun at anyone, said her sister, who also lives at the house. She said Kaua was “not right in the head.”
No one else was reported injured.
The ex-girlfriend and four family members, including a baby girl, safely evacuated after he was shot.
The ordeal for many residents was reminiscent of the Oct. 30, 1998, standoff with the same man.
Many who live in the area are longtime residents and recalled how Kaua held his girlfriend hostage in a home perched above a stretch of Komo Mai Drive that snakes down into a valley that is Pacific Palisades’ only route in and out of the subdivision.
Police prevented motorists from driving the roadway because Kaua had a vantage point from which to shoot anyone along the route.
In that case the entire subdivision of Pacific Palisades was either trapped inside, unable to travel that route; or stuck outside, unable to get home.
Kaua was armed with an assault rifle, firing off 17 shots during the standoff, which began because police were trying to serve him with parole violations.
In that case a police sharpshooter shot him in the chest as he held his wife, Chanel, at gunpoint at a Waimano Home Road home.
In a similar incident in 1990 he barricaded himself inside an Ewa Beach home with his pregnant girlfriend and her infant son when police tried to serve him with a probation violation warrant.
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