Two feared for their lives in Puna shootout
By Hugh Clark
Advertiser Big Island Bureau
HILO, Hawai'i — A 64-year-old Puna woman yesterday described hearing gunfire from the back seat of her car and thinking she had been shot by two men who had entered the vehicle without her permission the night of June 14.
Appearing at a preliminary hearing for Keola Nathen Kanae, 19, who is charged with six felonies including kidnapping, witness Janet Judy said she and a friend, Arnold Westphal, 65, were heading to a square-dancing program around 7:50 p.m. when they spotted a man in the middle of 'Ainaloa Boulevard in Puna and another on the side of the road.
Keola Nathen Kanae, 19, is charged with six felonies in the June 14 incident.
Despite Westphal's advice to keeping on driving, Judy said she stopped and told the pair there was no room in the car for them. But they climbed into the back seat anyway and instructed her to take them to Kaloli Boulevard in Hawaiian Paradise Park, she said.
Moments later, "I saw a gun pointing at me," Judy said, referring to a sawed-off .30-caliber rifle used in the incident. About 2.8 miles before the Route 130 junction, Judy pulled over when she spotted four police cars that had responded to a report of gunfire.
"I saw an opportunity to get some help and rolled down the window," Judy testified.
That's when the other suspect, Shaun "Mika" Thompson, 20, told her he would "blow my ... head off if I did not keeping going," she said.
When Westphal sounded the car's horn to alert the officers, he was threatened, too.
Judy then heard a gunshot from the back seat. "We both thought we were shot," the woman testified.
Big Island police say Thompson fired the first shot in an apparent attempt to kill himself after the two men were ordered to get out of the car. An officer immediately fired a single shot in response, hitting Kanae in the chest as he was getting out of the vehicle. Thompson then fired the rifle a second time, delivering a fatal blast to his own head.
His death has been classified as a suicide.
Westphal did not testify. Judy said it was too dark that evening to recognize the suspects.
But police officer Iris McGuire testified that as she approached to within a foot of the driver's window of Judy's car, she recognized Kanae and Thompson sitting in the back seat. Both men have criminal records and are well-known to police.
The name of the police officer who shot Kanae has not been released. The male officer, described as an 11-year police veteran, was placed on leave in accordance with Hawai'i County Police Department policy. An investigation into the shooting is continuing by the department's Criminal Investigation Section and the Internal Affairs Section.
Following yesterday's testimony, Big Island Judge Jeffrey Choi set Kanae's arraignment in Circuit Court for July 19. He is charged with two counts each of kidnapping, using a firearm in the commission of a felony and terroristic threatening. Kanae, who is on probation for a terroristic threatening conviction, is being held without bail at the Hawai'i Community Correctional Center.
Kanae's problems mounted yesterday when police charged him with second-degree attempted murder, a firearm offense and 11 counts of first-degree terroristic threatening for a June 9 incident at a housewarming party in Hawaiian Paradise Park.
He made his initial court appearance on those charges yesterday, but the hearing was postponed until 2 p.m. tomorrow.
