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Here are some other stories that grabbed headlines in 2020.
Feds indict alleged crime boss
On July 15, federal authorities announced the unsealing of an indictment charging Oahu businessman Michael Miske Jr. and 10 associates with crimes including racketeering, drug trafficking, murder, kidnapping, robbery and activities involving chemical weapons, extortion, money laundering and bank and wire fraud.
Miske, owner of Kamaaina Termite & Pest Control and other businesses, was accused of being the leader of a long-running criminal enterprise that waged violence against rivals and innocent members of the community. Miske is also suspected of plotting a kidnapping and murder-for-hire in connection with the disappearance of 21-year-old Johnathan Fraser, who was last seen July 30, 2016, and has never been found.
Prosecutors allege Miske planned Fraser’s murder on the mistaken belief he was the driver of a vehicle involved in a November 2015 crash that resulted in the death of Miske’s son, Caleb- Jordan Keanu Miske-Lee.
Miske is awaiting trial.
Close call with a hurricane
Hurricane Douglas burst into the Central Pacific basin on July 24 as a Category 4 major hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 130 mph. As Douglas churned toward a direct hit over Hawaii, civil defense and government officials warned islanders to prepare for the worst.
But increasing vertical wind shear, mainly at higher levels, caused the hurricane to weaken and jog northward just as it was gunning for Oahu. The storm passed within 30 miles north of Oahu on July 26 as a Category 1 hurricane, causing only minor impacts. It was the closest a hurricane had come to Oahu in more than 60 years.
“We were lucky,” Central Pacific Hurricane Center meteorologist John Bravender said afterward. “If there was only a slight shift southward, it would have brought significant damaging winds and rains.”
Kealohas sentenced in corruption case
In one of Hawaii’s most stunning public corruption cases, disgraced former Police Chief Louis Kealoha was ordered to spend seven years in federal prison and his estranged wife, former Deputy Prosecutor Katherine Kealoha, was handed a 13-year term in separate sentencings Nov. 30.
“The breadth of this criminal conduct is astounding,” Chief U.S. District Court Judge J. Michael Seabright said in sentencing Louis Kealoha. “This truly is a case where the truth seems to be stranger than fiction.”
Katherine Kealoha was found guilty of using a reverse mortgage to cheat her 100-year-old grandmother out of her home in order to bankroll the former couple’s lavish lifestyle, and then organizing a conspiracy to frame her uncle when he and his mother learned of the scheme.
For their role in the conspiracy, former HPD Criminal Intelligence Unit officers Minh-Hung “Bobby” Nguyen received a federal prison sentence of 4-1/2 years and Lt. Derek Wayne Hahn was sentenced to 3-1/2 years.
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