Mysterious crash paralyzes H-2
A woman is critically hurt in an accident caused, she says, by a woman driver shooting at her
A woman was critically injured in a traffic accident on the H-2 Freeway yesterday after fleeing from a woman she says was shooting at her while driving on the roadway, police said.
Police shut down town-bound lanes of the freeway for five hours yesterday to investigate the accident, creating major traffic jams and forcing people to take long detours or wait out the bumper-to-bumper lineup at nearby shopping centers. To get out of the traffic, witnesses said, some drivers even drove the wrong way on freeway on-ramps.
The incident happened shortly before 11 a.m., when a woman was driving toward Honolulu on the H-2 and a woman in a second car started shooting at her, police said.
It's unclear what provoked the incident, and police did not have a description of the suspect last night.
The victim told police that the suspect fired "several shots" at her vehicle while she was driving near the Kipapa Bridge, forcing her to speed away and collide with a woman in a third vehicle.
The suspect was not involved in the accident, and police could not immediately say what kind of car she was driving.
The victim was taken to the Queen's Medical Center in critical condition, but later upgraded to serious condition. She did not have any gunshot wounds.
The woman in the third vehicle, which struck a guardrail after the collision, was taken to the Pali Momi Medical Center in stable condition.
Ages on the victims were not available last night. Initial police reports indicated either the victim or suspect were members of the military, but a Schofield Barracks spokesman could not confirm that last night.
After the accident, police shut down the town-bound lanes of the H-2 between Wahiawa and Waipio Gentry from 10:53 a.m. to 3:25 p.m.
The freeway's Wahiawa-bound lanes were closed for about an hour because of a separate traffic accident. Witnesses said that a serious fender-bender may have been caused when a driver was gawking at the collision in the town-bound lanes instead of watching the road.
Silvia Kock, who lives in Wahiawa, got out of church in Mililani about 11:40 a.m. yesterday and immediately was caught in heavy traffic.
A drive to nearby Wal-Mart, where she waited for an hour in hopes the traffic jam would thin out, took 45 minutes instead of the normal ten.
"When I went over the Mililani overpass, I looked to my right and to my left and the traffic was just still," she said, adding that Wal-Mart in Mililani was packed with shoppers who were also waiting out the traffic.
Cathy Manley, of Wahiawa, got on the H-2 about 11:15 a.m. for a drive to the swap meet at Aloha Stadium. She got past the accident site, just a few miles from the on-ramp she used, after about 45 minutes.
At that point, she said, police were letting one lane of the highway's town-bound lanes through at time.
Police later completely stopped traffic.
"I have to give the police credit," she said. "They did a really good job."
Star-Bulletin writer Rosemarie Bernardo contributed to this report.