Crash takes young life

Swerving to avoid an oncoming vehicle, a Kailua man hits a wall and dies

It's fewer than 10 blocks from the Taco Bell restaurant where Cheyne Kalani Gilman-D'Adamo ate with friends late Friday and the Kailua home where he lived all his 22 years.

But he never made it home.

Shortly before midnight, as he was driving north on Oneawa Street, Gilman-D'Adamo swerved to avoid what looked like a gold Jeep Cherokee that ran a stop sign on a side street, a friend following in another vehicle told police.

Gilman-D'Adamo's 1992 white Honda Acura slammed into a lava-rock wall, crumpling the car "so its front wheel and back wheel on the driver's side were almost touching," said Neal Kau, who lives on the property with the rock wall.

Police are still looking for the driver of the other vehicle, which fled the scene. Anyone with information is asked to call traffic investigators.

A police traffic division spokesman said the accident happened on a dry, well-lit roadway under clear skies. He said speed was a possible factor in the accident and it was unknown if alcohol was a factor.

By yesterday afternoon, flower bouquets and mylar balloons marked the damaged wall.

"He (Gilman-D'Adamo) had a big heart," his sister Melissa D'Adamo, 26, said yesterday at the accident scene, just hours after flying in from her Las Vegas home. "He helped anybody as much as he could. Everyone loved him. He's going to be missed.

"He was a good young man, he worked hard and he was full of aloha."

After graduating from Kalaheo High in 2002, Gilman-D'Amato worked as a mason in the construction business, family members said. Within the past year, his younger brother Sheldon Gilman, 19, started working with him.

"Sheldon is going to be lost without his big brother," said cousin Chelsea Taito. "They did everything together.

"Grandma Florence would take them both breakfast in the morning" before they went to work, said Taito, 21, whose mother is Gilman-D'Amato's sister and who grew up in the same house with him. "Cheyne would get out of the car and say, 'I love you, Grandma.' "

After work, Gilman-D'Amato "was a beachboy -- he surfed, he dived, he did everything," Taito said. "He was just a local boy."

Taito, Gilmar-D'Adamo's sisters, D'Adamo and Brandie Vierra, 27, of Kailua, and other cousins and aunts were among family members at the accident site yesterday afternoon, receiving hugs and condolences from friends -- and even strangers -- who stopped by.

Taito said she constantly marveled at how Gilmar-D'Adamo gave to his friends.

"He'd bring tons of friends to the house, and I'd say, 'Cheyne, come on, tell your friends to go home,' " Taito said. "But in the morning I'd come out and he'd be cooking them breakfast... He was like the ringleader. I think they'll be heartbroken without him."

"It's so hard to see a younger brother go," D'Adamo said. "When I pass a place like this (a roadside memorial), I always feel for the family. I never thought that it would be our family."

CORRECTION Tuesday, February 28, 2006 » Cheyne Kalani Gilman-D'Adamo, 19, was killed Friday night in a single-vehicle crash in Kailua. His name was misspelled in a story on Page A17 Sunday. Please see the applicable Corrections Page for more information.