JAMM AQUINO / JAQUINO@STARBULLETIN.COM Leonard Johnson, brother of Waikiki resident Oliver Johnson, and mother Friedrike Boszko appeared at a news conference yesterday at the law offices of Leavitt Yamane & Soldner. Oliver Johnson, below, died late Thursday after contracting flesh-eating infections following a March 31 fall into sewage-infested Ala Wai Boat Harbor.

The family wants answers to a man’s rapid, "horrible death"

Friedrike Boszko says she wants to know why her son suffered a "horrible, horrible death" Thursday night of bacterial infections that swelled his body to three times its normal size.

"I cannot even describe to you what an incredible and unbelievable nightmare shock it was," Boszko said yesterday after her son Oliver Johnson died in the Queen's Medical Center. "In my whole life, (even) in a science fiction movie, I have never seen anything like it.

"It was difficult recognizing him as a human being."

The 34-year-old mortgage loan officer's death leaves many questions, including how he ended up in the Ala Wai Boat Harbor on March 31 and whether the water contaminated with raw sewage caused the infections.

Autopsy results show that Johnson, who was taken to the hospital Sunday, died of "multi-system organ failure" caused by an infection of the blood -- septic shock -- due to a vibrio vulnificus bacterial infection of his foot injuries, according to the Honolulu Medical Examiner's Office. Alcoholic liver disease also contributed to his death, it said.

Boszko and her other son, Leonard, Oliver's older brother, watched as his condition deteriorated from three different types of bacterial infections, including two (vibrio vulnificus and aeromonas hydrophila) that can cause flesh-eating disease symptoms.

Leonard said there was almost nothing of his brother left to keep himself alive, just "machines and drugs."

"The flesh was dying. It doesn't stop with just the outside, it was dying everywhere," he said. "Complete kidney failure, liver failure, his intestines were being eaten out.

"He was swelling up so much he couldn't pump any air into his lungs because his intestines and the other rest of his body was so swollen; so in order to alleviate that pressure, they cut him from down the middle of his stomach to open things up so that they would have room to expand.

"That was the only way they could keep even the life support working."

After amputating his left leg above the knee, Queen's doctors told Johnson's family that they he could also lose his other leg and left arm. With that in mind, the family decided Thursday night to take him off life support. He died at 9:30 p.m.

"Having maybe no legs and maybe one arm, I cannot imagine that he would want to live that way," said his mother. "And no guarantee that he's not brain-damaged or that he would have to be on a ventilator for the rest of his life."

"Sometimes I'm really, really, really sad, and sometimes I'm kind of OK. I just, I feel numb."

Boszko, of Boca Raton, Fla., said she hired Honolulu attorney Jim Leavitt* to investigate the case.

"He didn't have to die, and like any other family members they would like to know the facts behind his death," Levitt said.

While Johnson was hospitalized, his friends rallied and spoke about his condition and said his infections from harbor waters were the fault of a decision by the city to divert nearly 50 million gallons of raw untreated sewage into the Ala Wai Canal after a 42-inch force main failed on March 24.

Police investigators know that Johnson returned home to the Tradewinds condominium on Hobron Lane at 5:15 p.m. March 31, soaking wet and bloody, according to a building security guard.

Police said the guard called for an ambulance and police. A third-degree assault report was made, and paramedics took Johnson to Straub Clinic & Hospital, where he was treated and released by 10:30 p.m., police said.

Over the weekend, he complained of leg pains to his friends, and by Sunday he was having trouble breathing and was taken to the Queen's emergency room. By nightfall his organs began to fail, and he had to be put on a ventilator, police said.

Those details are what police know. The rest they are not sure of at all.

"They want to separate the rumors from the facts," Levitt added.

Police said that while Johnson could still speak, he told friends different stories. He told some friends he had fallen into the Ala Wai Boat Harbor, while some heard about how he got into a fight with another man and was forced into the water.

Sources close to the investigation said he was drinking with a woman and one or two men at the Harbor Pub across the street from where he lived, and that he got into a fight.

They also said police had identified a man who admits getting into a fight with Johnson before Johnson was seen at his apartment building, but denies forcing him into the water.

And yesterday homicide detectives recovered the bloody clothes that Johnson was wearing when he showed up in his apartment building lobby on March 31.

Investigators have not yet established a timeline of events. According to Tradewinds security computer logs, Johnson swiped his gate key card at 4 a.m. March 31, then again that evening after 5 p.m., which leaves about 13 hours in which his whereabouts are unaccounted for.

Sources also said Johnson might have not gotten his wounds properly cleaned at Straub because he was drunk and refused treatment.

Boszko said all she knows is that her son -- the little boy who used to ask her to watch him surf the waves back in Florida -- is dead.

"We want to know the truth of what happened and the sequence of events," she said. "I don't know if I want to necessarily find blame, but I would like to find out ... what caused this.

"It wasn't only a death, it was just a horrible, horrible death."