Punchbowl shooting victim recalls fateful afternoon
By Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writer
The empty Gatorade bottle on Eric Kawamoto's neatly groomed front yard on the slopes of Punchbowl seemed out of place.
Rebecca Breyer • The Honolulu Advertiser
But as he thought about it yesterday from his hospital room at The Queen's Medical Center, the bottle seemed like a blatant warning. That was hindsight, though. On Thursday, it was a piece of trash.
Eric Kawamoto, recovering from a gunshot wound at The Queen's Medical Center, said that the intruder, aside from pointing a gun at him, didn't look particularly mean. "He just looked like he wanted to rob me," Kawamoto said.
It was about 4:30 p.m. when Kawamoto parked his motorcycle and picked up the empty bottle. The family dog, Ginger, needed to be picked up from the veterinarian. His wife, Leslie, was still at work and his mother-in-law was away on a trip.
Eric Kawamoto walked into the house.
More strangeness: The stuffed animals that Leslie had collected in a curio cabinet were on the entryway floor. Kawamoto kept walking, trying to think of other ways to explain what he didn't want to accept.
He continued down the stairs of his hillside home and reached the living room, where the last vestiges of denial were dashed. The house had been ransacked. Burglarized.
"If you see something amiss in your house," he said, "don't go in. Get out fast and go call the cops. Let them go in."
Kawamoto, 43, was sitting up in his hospital bed yesterday as he recalled the encounter that led to being shot in the chest during a daytime burglary. It is a shooting that authorities are calling an example of how property crime has become out of control on O'ahu, signaling the need for action before more violence occurs.
It wasn't the first time that the Kawamoto home was the target of burglars. It had happened once before, but this time looked worse, Kawamoto said.
A collection of Japanese dolls lay scattered across the floor of the living room, their tiny kimonos ripped from their bodies. Kawamoto's mind fixed on them — the violated dolls. He said he felt himself grow angry. The emotion built until he looked toward the kitchen and saw the gunman.
"Give me your money"
The gunman was average looking; he didn't seem crazed, Kawamoto said. Except for the gun he held pointed toward Kawamoto, he didn't look particularly mean.
"He just looked like he wanted to rob me," Kawamoto said.
So Kawamoto took $40 or $50 from his wallet, and handed it over.
"But that wasn't enough for him," he said. "I gave him my wallet and he threw everything out on the floor."
In his hospital bed yesterday, Kawamoto, an electrical engineer who works for the military, sat quietly for a moment. He talked about the staff at Queen's, and how kind they had been to him.
A 17-year-old suspect believed to be the gunman was arrested within an hour in a nearby stream. Kawamoto said the police, who chased down the suspect — helicopter in the air, officers on foot and on motorcycles — were wonderful, as were the neighbors who called 911 to report a suspicious man running through their back yards.
Then Kawamoto found the strength to return to the vision of the gunman.
"He was close," he said. "Real close. I probably could have reached out and grabbed the gun."
He recalled looking into the barrel, thinking the opening seemed small, wondering if the gun was real. Maybe he'd take a step toward the man ...
"Whatcha coming at me for?" the man said.
Now the gunman seemed a little different. Unsure of himself. More volatile. Kawamoto moved toward the stairs. He wanted to go up. To safety, to get away.
The gunman motioned for him to go down the stairs to the bedrooms, the deepest part of the house. Something in Kawamoto rebelled.
"No," he said.
The gunman yelled at him to go down the stairs, but Kawamoto knew safety was up, not down. The fate that awaited him on the bottom floor was unacceptable.
"No," he said. "No. If you're going to shoot me, shoot me."
"Stupid, stupid," Kawamoto said yesterday, second-guessing the instincts that had made him take a stand.
The man, he said, pulled the trigger. The gun clicked, Kawamoto recalled, empty metal on metal. The gunman chambered a round and fired again, and this time the bullet went directly into the left side of Kawamoto's chest.
He remembers stumbling toward the stairs, but doesn't remember the gunman leaving ahead of him. He remembers how he went up, headed for the house next door. He asked his neighbor to come and help him, and said she came and the other neighbors did, too.
He remembered the police arriving, and how he wished the ambulance had come first, and how relieved he was when it was there.
He remembered thinking, just before his thoughts become hazy and his breathing more difficult, that he was glad that the police were there so quickly and would catch the gunman.
He awoke later, tubes down his throat, his wife by his side. Kawamoto, a gentle man, recalled his first thought:
"I hope they nail the guy," he said.
Reach Karen Blakeman at 535-2430 or kblakeman@honoluluadvertiser.com.
