Posted at 11:40 a.m., Monday, June 04, 2001

'It didn't have to happen,' says dead man's mother

By Brandon Masuoka and Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writers

The mother of a 20-year-old man killed in a police standoff in Wahiawa said today the shooting could have been averted if she had been given a chance to talk with her son.

"It didn't have to happen, Cynthia Long said. "It did not have to escalate. The entire situation escalated out of control unnecessarily."

Police said Dustan Long fired on them, and a police sharpshooter fired one bullet that struck Long.

Preliminary evidence showed Long's bullet came close enough to the officers to pierce a ladder police were holding near the house.

"There was a hole in the ladder," said Honolulu police homicide Lt. Bill Kato. "It wasn't there when they first took the ladder. It looks fresh."

Cynthia Long said she tried to convince police to let her talk to her son, but was refused. "I'm not coping with it at all," she said. "I think at 2 a.m. if they let me enter my home, I could have walked out with my son. I know that for a fact."

Long was shot after an hours-long standoff at the man's Wahiawa home at 290 Karsten Drive.

Police said the incident began when Long fired shots at a carload of young men who had been at a party at the home. It ended when Long fired shots at two Specialized Services Division, or SWAT team, officers, who then fired back, killing Long.

An 18-year-old man in a Volkswagen Golf that Long fired on was wounded in the shoulder, and a 20-year-old in the right forearm. The driver and two other male passengers were not hit.

Long's mother, whose husband died a couple of years ago, works in the emergency room of Wahiawa General Hospital. She was there when the driver of the Volkswagen brought the two injured men in for treatment, the paramedic said. When the young men said who had shot them, Long hurried out.

Georgina Edayan, who lives across the street from the Longs, said that when police evacuated the neighborhood about 3 a.m., she saw Long's mother standing outside the gate of her property in her white work uniform. She was there still when police let the neighbors go home about 7 a.m., Edayan said.

During the intervening hours, police said, negotiators were trying to get Long to come out of the house. Instead he yelled obscenities and threats at the officers, and eventually shot at them.

The first officers to respond to the disturbance did not know they were headed to a shooting, much less a standoff, detectives said. The earliest call, shortly after 2 a.m., reported fighting at the home.

The 18-year-old who was hurt in the shoulder — who asked that his name not be used, on the advice of his parents — said he had been at Long's house when fighting broke out. He said his family feared Long's friends might blame him for the death.

The man said Long began arguing with a woman at the party. He told her to leave, then went into the house and came out with what appeared to be a .22-caliber rifle, and fired it into the air.

The injured man said some of his friends were fighting with some of Long's friends at that point, but he and his buddies heard the shots and headed toward their Volkswagen Golf, parked across the street.

Long fired at them as they pulled away, he said. The body and back window of the car were pierced.

Marla Edayan, Georgina's daughter, said she stepped outside early yesterday when she heard a commotion across the street. She saw five young men, including a man she knew well and another who is her nephew, pile into a Volkswagen Golf.

Across the street, balancing on a wooden support at one end of the gate was the polite young neighbor who always called her "auntie."

Long was holding a rifle, she said, and firing it repeatedly at the departing car.