Policeman fires at stolen car during chase
| • | Previous police shootings |
By Vicki Viotti
Advertiser Staff Writer
Detectives are investigating a case today in which an officer fired shots at a stolen car after its driver attempted to back into police and then fled to a nearby Pearl City carport, where he was finally arrested.
Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser
Nobody was seriously injured in the incident — the driver later complained only of a sore hand, police said — but it caused a huge disruption: The 28-year-old male driver rammed a parking gate at Pacheco Park, next to the Pearl City police station. He then knocked down a streetlamp pole at the busy intersection of Waimano Home Road and Kamehameha Highway at about 5 a.m. Portions of Kamehameha Highway were closed off during the peak of the morning rush hour.
Officer Creighton Hatico of the Honolulu Police Department points to bullet holes in a car after a chase involving shots fired by another officer.
Perhaps the person most terrified was 75-year-old Doris Takeshita, who was awakened by the sound of scuffling in her carport, just a few feet from her bedroom window, at 927 Fourth St.
"I heard somebody rushing in, and somebody say, 'Catch him! Catch him!" Takeshita said. "I was afraid to turn on the light, so I didn't see anything."
She added that she heard a man weeping outside shortly after the arrest but didn't know whether or not it was the intruder.
Criminal investigation detectives are looking into auto break-in and criminal property damage charges against the driver. And, because shots were fired by the officer, the police internal affairs division is investigating the incident as well, said the division's Lt. Michael Tanaka.
The incident began at 4:49 a.m. when police responded to a report of an auto break-in at the parking lot of the Red Carnation, a bar at 719 Kamehameha Hwy. The car, a charcoal-gray Nissan Sentra of unknown year, was soon spotted in the parking lot of Longs Drug Store, across the highway at the Pearl City Shopping Center, Tanaka said.
When patrol officers approached the car, the driver pulled out of the lot onto Waimano Home Road and then left into Pacheco Park. A metal gate barred the driveway, but the car rammed that and knocked half of it to the ground.
Tanaka said police cars followed the Sentra and some officers emerged from their vehicles and ordered the driver to stop and get out of the car. Tanaka had not determined this morning precisely how many officers were involved in the pursuit.
However, he did learn that the driver backed his car rapidly toward the officers and that one of them then fired multiple shots, striking the front passenger side. The front passenger window showed one of the bullet holes; others could be seen in the car body.
The driver then tore down Waimano Home Road, struck a pole at the intersection, crossed over Kamehameha into Lehua Avenue and then finally struck a median barrier opposite 1011 Lehua and stopped.
He fled on foot to Fourth Street, where officers found him hiding behind a car at the Takeshita home.
Police later discovered that the car already had been reported stolen and now carried new license plates.
The man complained of a sore hand, an injury presumably sustained in one of the collisions, Tanaka said. Police said he was taken to Pali Momi Medical Center, where he was treated and released, and remains in custody.
Internal affairs is probing the actions by the officer who shot at the car. He is 33 years old, with about nine years of service on the police force, Tanaka said.
Takeshita was still reeling from the turmoil when the driver was taken away and the wreckage was being cleared. She lives in the white frame house with her sister and niece; a sister-in-law lives alone in a back house on the family-owned lot.
"At first I thought it was my sister-in-law," she said, describing her initial reaction to the noise. "But she was scared, too. She didn't want to turn the light on, either."
