Ex-girlfriend says The ex-girlfriend of accused cop killer Shane Mark once told police that he had kicked her, threatened to kill her, and then punched holes in the walls of her Waianae home.
Mark abused her
The woman had been in the
Prosecutors ask no bail
store with the accused cop killer
just before the shooting
By Sally Apgar and Rosemarie Bernardo
sapgar@starbulletin.com | rbernardo@starbulletin.comIn 1994, she also told police that Mark used "ice," or crystal methamphetamine, and often carried guns and knives. She soon won a court order to protect herself and their then-15-month-old baby.
At 12:05 p.m. Tuesday, Melissa Hecky, now 29, and her daughter Shansy, now 9, walked into the Baskin-Robbins in the Kapolei Shopping Center to meet Mark. At the time, police were looking for Mark for a Feb. 1 incident in which he allegedly shot a man twice in the thigh in a parking lot fight over a faulty surveillance camera.
At 12:55, Mark walked into the Baskin-Robbins with a gun tucked into his waistband, according to police. He had not seen his daughter in several years. Tests would later show he had several drugs in his system at the time, including "ice" and PCP, a powerful hallucinogen and horse tranquilizer, according to a source close to a police investigation.
As soon as Hecky saw undercover officers approach the door, she grabbed her daughter and left.
Minutes later, undercover Honolulu police officer Glen Gaspar, 40, lay dying on the floor of the ice cream store with two bullets in his chest and one in his hip.
After the shooting, a small amount of "ice" was found in his backpack, according to police.
"I'm just devastated at what happened," said Hecky, who is back home in the Midwest with her children, in a phone interview yesterday. "I don't want to talk about this. We just want to get back to our normal lives."
Hecky met Mark when she was 16 and working at the Tastee Freeze in Waianae. Mark had been kicked out of his mother's house when he was 14 and had moved into the Nanakuli home of Ale Tolentino, a big-hearted man who runs fishing boats. Tolentino has a big family of his own but opens his home to children like Mark, as long as they do not use drugs.
"I give kids a place where they can be safe," he said.
Tolentino taught Mark to fish, and he started working on a commercial fishing boat at 15. He attended Nanakuli High School until ninth grade.
Tolentino said Mark's mother knew where he was but never visited him in the four years he lived with them. He said Mark's father lived on the Big Island "and didn't want anything to do with him." Mark had three siblings, but he remembers seeing only one sister, Cynthia.
Yesterday, Cynthia did not want to talk about her brother.
"I just don't know what happened to him," she said.
Tolentino said: "We treated him like a son. He was a real hard worker, and I don't know many men who could stand side by side with him and work as hard."
Near the end of his stay with the Tolentinos, Hecky moved in with them.
"They had a rocky road. It was an off-and-on thing," he said.
Tolentino said that as Mark earned money from fishing and began to hang around older guys, he started drinking and doing drugs. Tolentino did not like it and the two had a talk.
"After that he chose to stay away," Tolentino said. "When he started getting into trouble (with the police and drugs), he just veered away from us."
Tolentino had not seen Mark in about six or seven years and said he was shocked when he heard about the shooting.
"PCP and 'ice' is a dangerous combination for a person," he said. "I don't care who they are."
Mark's adult criminal record started when he stole a car in 1993 at the age of 18. He was released and not charged. His next arrest was for abuse of a family member. Since then he has been arrested 64 times and convicted 14 times for crimes ranging from car theft to petty theft.
During his most recent prison term, Mark was denied parole four times for reasons ranging from possessing a narcotic and failing to follow orders of a prison employee, to failure to participate in a work furlough program.
A prison official at Halawa said Mark failed to have his parole approved after he tested positive for "ice" at least three times while in prison.
Clayton Frank, warden at the Oahu Community Correctional Center, said Mark participated in the Laumaka Work Furlough Program but incurred "a serious misconduct" and was sent back to the Halawa facility. A prison official said Mark had a difficult time following the rules while he was involved in the program.
While serving his sentence on Oahu, Mark attended substance abuse programs and was involved in community service work.
In May, Mark was transferred from Halawa to the Oklahoma Diamondback Correctional Facility, where he participated in life-skill, substance-abuse and educational classes. Mark returned to Oahu last October and was released in November.
Frank said that some inmates who are released from prison just "don't make it past three to six months." He added: "Some have a hard time adjusting. Some go back to the lifestyle that brought them here.
"Unfortunately, he's not making appropriate adjustments in his lifestyle. That has led him to being incarcerated again."
Asked what Mark is like, Hecky said, "He is what he is in all those police reports."
Star-Bulletin reporter Nelson Daranciang contributed to this report.