Big Island kidnap arraignment turns rowdy
By Hugh Clark
Advertiser Big Island Bureau
HILO, Hawai'i — Two Puna men, one who was shot and wounded by police and another who committed suicide, had threatened last week to shoot their two kidnap victims in the head, according to a police affidavit filed in court yesterday.
Tim Wright • The Honolulu Advertiser
The two men were accused of commandeering a car June 14 and threatening the 64-year-old woman driver and her 65-year-old passenger. Keola Nathen Kanae, 19, was wounded and Shaun "Mika" Thompson, 20, shot himself in the head with a sawed-off rifle in the car, police said.
Keola Nathen Kanae was wounded by police in the Puna incident.
Kanae, who was charged with six felony kidnapping and threatening counts, appeared in court yesterday for the first time on the charges in an unusually rowdy proceeding. A group of Kanae's friends and family had arrived prior to the hearing.
The defendant extended his middle finger inside the courtroom toward a press photographer. Later he attempted to spit on the photographer as he was being taken to an elevator by deputy sheriffs escorting him to the Hawai'i Community Correctional Facility.
In addition, a person smashed a glass cover to a second-floor fire hose in the State Office Building. The jagged chunks of glass were removed by state janitors, but the hose was left exposed.
Kanae, who was shot in his left chest, is being held without bail under an order signed by Judge Jeffrey Choi yesterday. He is scheduled to return to court Tuesday for a hearing on whether he must stand trial on the felony charges.
According to prosecutors, Kanae and Thompson brandished a Winchester 30-30 rifle to frighten the pair after flagging them down on 'Ainaloa Boulevard. They forced their way into the vehicle, which police have not described.
In an affidavit by police Detective Richard Miyamoto, the two men "threatened to blow off the driver's and the front-seat passenger's heads with a rifle."
To emphasize their claim, Kanae asked Thompson to "show the gun to the victims ..."
In the written complaint filed in court yesterday, Kanae is accused of kidnapping and threatening the car's driver, a Hawaiian Acres subdivision resident. The male passenger is also a Puna resident. Neither was available for comment yesterday.
Police also revealed that Kanae is one of two suspects in an early evening June 9 incident in Hawaiian Paradise Park where he resides. They said a shotgun was fired three times on 7th Avenue and Paradise Drive that day.
