Kahealani's mom demanded truth from suspect 'son-in-law'

By Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writer

When Patricia Aki learned that Kahealani Indreginal was missing, she grieved along with her son and his fiancee, Kahealani's stepsister.

One suspect, Christopher Aki, left, and Kahealani's stepsister appealed Thursday for the girl's safe return. Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser

"It was nearly 1 in the morning," Aki said. "And I heard voices."

Chris and Tanya Mamala-Tumbaga — who with their 11-month old baby had lived with Aki in the basement of her father's home — were talking to Kahealani's mother, Lehua Tumbaga.

"She was confronting him, mother-in-law to son-in-law," Aki said yesterday as she sat in the living room of her father's Kalihi home. Her voice was flat from shock, sleep deprivation and sedatives. Chris' grandfather, for whom Chris was named, hovered in the background, encouraging his daughter to talk, but staying protectively nearby.

"She wanted to get the truth from him," Aki said. "And that is when my nightmare began."

The Tumbaga-Indreginal family had been intertwined with hers for a very long time, Aki said. She and her son had been neighbors to the family at the Pu'uwai Momi housing complex for 13 years.

Chris and Tanya attended 'Aiea Elementary School together, Aki said, where they frequently fought each other. By intermediate school, they were in love, she said.

Tanya wanted to be a nurse. Chris, a Junior ROTC student, dreamed of a career in the Army, an option that evaporated when asthma kept him from enlisting. After that, Chris drifted, Aki said.

"I'd been needling him to get a job," the older Christopher Aki said. "He had far too much time on his hands."

On Dec. 30 of last year, Tanya gave birth to Chris' son, Ezra Christian. The new family moved in with Aki in the basement apartment her father had built. They planned to be married, Aki said, but kept putting off going in for premarital counseling at Aki's church, First Assembly of God.

Patricia Aki says she can't understand how her son came to be a suspect in a murder. Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser

But they were a couple, and the families were linked through them. Chris and Tanya often went to Tanya's mother's house. Tanya's siblings frequently came to visit them.

As she talked, Aki ran her fingers over photographs of Tanya's family, and a portrait of Kahealani.

"She loved Christopher," Aki said of Kahealani. "She looked up to him. He was like an older brother to her."

Chris was attentive to his baby and to Tanya, Aki said. But he had a life outside the family home that his mother knew nothing about.

"His friends from Pu'uwai Momi weren't welcome here," she said. Later, when police told her the name of another suspect arrested in the case, Robert Hicks, and also mentioned a third man, she would tell them the names meant nothing to her.

On the night Lehua Tumbaga came to the house, Aki confronted her son. Was what Lehua said true? she asked.

"Yeah, Mom," she said he told her. "But I wasn't involved."

Detectives called on Chris later Friday morning and told him they would want to speak with him again yesterday, she said. He cooperated with them, but didn't get a chance to keep yesterday's appointment.

On Friday afternoon, Kahealani's body was found. That night, the detectives called the house and told Aki she would need to bring her son to them. She went with Chris, and he turned himself in. That was the last she saw of him.

"I know he is scared," Aki said. "I don't know how he got involved in that.

"We're just all here, in the dark, waiting."

In the darkness last night, after a candlelight vigil for Kahealani attended by about 300 people at the Pu'uwai Momi Housing complex, Tanya stood holding her and Chris' baby.

"We were shocked," she said. "I was pretty depressed, you know. I'd asked him, and he said 'no.'

"We have a lot of mixed emotions we can't overcome right now."