Officer shoots
man in car
in Nanakuli

Police say the man was
trying to run over the
officer with a car

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By Nelson Daranciang
ndaranciang@starbulletin.com

A Honolulu police officer shot a 31-year-old man who police believe was trying to run over the officer with a car at a Nanakuli home yesterday.

The man was flown to Queen's Medical Center by Army medevac helicopter with a shoulder wound after police caught up with him in Kapolei. He was initially listed in critical condition but was upgraded to guarded last night.

The incident started about 10 a.m. when an officer from the Waianae Crime Reduction Unit stopped a man leaving the home at 89-336 Palikea St.

"They were doing surveillance on this house because of criminal activity in the Waianae area," said Lt. Michael Tanaka, Honolulu Police Internal Affairs Division.

Abel K. Pahinui said he went to his aunt's house to borrow a video camera when the officer stopped him in front of the home.

He said he was standing with the officer in the driveway when a car came speeding toward them from the back yard, he said.

"He tried to run us down," Pahinui said of the driver.

Pahinui said the officer pushed him out of the way and fired two shots at the oncoming car.

"One hit the engine, the other hit the driver," he said.

The first shot went through the hood of the car, the second through the driver's side window, according to police.

Pahinui said the car continued makai on Palikea Street then turned left on Mano Avenue.

Ipo Kahanahui said she was sitting in the garage of her home two streets down on Pua Avenue when she heard screeching coming from a car turning left from Nanakuli Avenue onto Pua in front of her house. She said the car then turned into her neighbor's driveway.

She said a man and a woman got out of the car, jumped over a stone wall into her back yard then ran makai toward Nanakuli Beach Park. Neither appeared hurt, she said.

"They looked more nervous than hurt," she said.

Witnesses told police they saw the couple catch a ride in a pickup truck heading townbound.

Tanaka said CrimeStoppers later received a tip that a man with a possible gunshot wound in his shoulder was in a car at a Kapolei home. Police caught both the man and the woman at the house.

Paulette Taylor, who lives at the home where the shooting occurred, disputed HPD's assertion that there was criminal activity there. She said the man who was shot, whom she knew only as Ben, had no permission to be there.

"He was warned not to come to the house," Taylor said.

The officer, 46, a 16-year HPD veteran, is being reassigned to desk duty while the department's Internal Affairs investigates the shooting.