Annastacia Vailoa, left, and sister Sharon discuss the beating death of their friend, Sam Talo, near Mayor Wright Housing. The sisters were visiting relatives at the Palama housing project.
Photo by Dennis Oda, Star-Bulletin

"Now and then trouble," said Fatu of the Palama housing project where he raised 16 children. "Here, it's like the weather - sometimes rain, sometimes windy, most times calm."

But Fatu says it will take more than community patrols to stop the violence, which has escalated in recent weeks.

On Friday, rival gang members from Mayor Wright Housing allegedly beat a Kuhio Park Terrace youth who died Saturday. Police suspect victim Sam Talo, 17, had gone with others to the housing project to seek retaliation for the beating death of his friend Tafilele Mika, 22, outside the Groove nightclub in Iwilei two weeks earlier. Enele Ili, 18, of Mayor Wright Housing, is charged with murdering Mika.

Talo's death was the second in two weeks allegedly involving Mayor Wright youths.

On Friday night, a taxicab carrying several Kuhio Park Terrace youths stopped at the Vineyard entrance to Mayor Wright Housing. The group allegedly stopped by to visit with family, residents said.

Annastacia Vailoa, 16, was sleeping at an aunt's apartment when she heard commotion on the street. From the Vineyard gate she watched several figures up the street beating someone as others looked on.

As she got closer, the crowd broke up and she discovered a fellow Kuhio Park Terrace resident on the ground.

She tried to mop up the bleeding cuts on his face with her shirt and accompanied him on an ambulance to Queen's Hospital, she said.

Talo, allegedly a member of the Baby Gangsters from Kuhio Park Terrace, died the next day of critical head injuries.

Talo, who used to attend Farrington High School, had graduated from the Youth Challenge program and received his diploma.

"He was too young to die," Vailoa said.

Fatu and other Mayor Wright residents have dedicated themselves to ridding the project of drugs, vandalism and violence that plagued the project before he helped organize a Neighborhood Watch in 1987.

Since then, with the help of police, residents have kicked out drug dealers, stopped drunken fights in the parking lots and sent home countless youths violating the 10 p.m. curfew, he said. "Most problems come from the outside - kids that used to live here."

He and security officers who patrol the 364 units bounded by Liliha and North King streets, Pua Lane and Vineyard Boulevard often chase out youths who don't belong in the housing.

But they keep coming back, Fatu said.

Police have increased patrols near both housing projects. The increased police presence is making some residents even more aware of the possibility of retaliation from youths seeking to avenge their friends' deaths, said a mother of four who declined to give her name.

"Something going happen again - this thing ain't gonna stop," said a youth. "Things just going insane."

But other youths are hoping for an end to the senseless violence.

"As much as I claim KPT, I don't think anybody here deserves to die," said Sharon Vailoa, 18.

Fatu hopes residents can meet with Kuhio Park Terrace officials to discuss the issues facing their youths - and how to stop the bloodshed.

"If everybody pitch in, easier to solve the problem," said Fatu. "We cannot work the thing alone."