Probe into fatal crash focuses on third vehicle

By Will Hoover
Advertiser North Shore Writer

One week after an early morning crash took the lives of five Waialua men and boys, police have begun to focus on the driver of another car that may have been involved in the incident.

"We're looking at that right now, as a matter of fact," Lt. Bennett Martin of the Police Department's vehicular homicide section said yesterday. "I've talked to the prosecutors about that and it is a feasible case. There's an allegation of racing, and we're going to check into that."

Martin said if the evidence shows that the crashed Honda and another car were racing, charges of manslaughter or negligent homicide could be brought against the driver of the other car.

Elizabeth Momi Askew, 40, the mother of two people killed in the crash, told reporters that another car was involved. She has said that a third son was among the three people in that other car, but that the cars were not racing.

Police have yet to complete witness interviews. However, Martin said police are acting on the possibility that another car might have been involved in some sort of high-speed competition with the dark green 1998 Honda Civic EX that slammed into a date palm tree at around 1:30 a.m. on March 18.

All five people in the Honda were killed on impact: the driver, Shannon Waiwaiole, 22; brothers Patrick Askew-Jackson, 21, and Kaimana Askew-Jackson, 13; the brothers' cousin, Jose Delizo Jr., 17; and neighborhood friend Rex Dicion, 31.

Investigators have established that Waiwaiole's car was speeding when his car struck the tree, and tests have shown that Waiwaiole's blood-alcohol content was nearly twice the legal limit.

"There was no racing," Askew said two days after the accident. "There was no cars side by side. That never happened. Nothing like that happened."

Askew's account is that on the evening of March 17 she and several neighborhood friends and family drove to Shark's Cove and later went to Sunset Beach. Although it was Patrick's 21st birthday, she has said the purpose was not a birthday party.

"We just decided to go for a ride and check out the waves," she said. "Yeah, there was drinking. But they wasn't drunk."

Medical tests show that Patrick Askew-Jackson's blood-alcohol level was 0.022, well below the legal limit of 0.08. Neither Askew-Jackson's younger brother, Kaimana, nor Dicion had any alcohol in their systems, according to the medical examiner's office. Delizo's blood-alcohol count was 0.109 percent.

Waiwaiole and Delizo, who was in the front passenger's seat, were both thrown from the car. The three in the back seat were pinned when the car buckled. At least two of them could only be extracted after firefighters cut off the car's roof and passenger door.

On the day of the crash, Askew told reporters that three cars were making their way back to Waialua on Kamehameha Highway — she and her 12-year old daughter in one car, the five victims in the Honda behind her, and a third car behind the Honda. She has since said that her 19-year-old son, his girlfriend and a niece were riding in the third car.

Askew said her car was in front as the three vehicles neared Hale'iwa Town. At some point the third car passed the other two vehicles, after which Waiwaiole's car also sped around Askew's car.

"The third car overtook Shannon and Shannon wanted to overtake it back," she said.

Askew said she saw a blur of red taillights as the green Honda neared the intersection of Kamehameha Highway and Kawailoa Drive, followed by a cloud of smoke after the Honda veered across the oncoming lane and hit the tree.

At the time Askew said the Honda might have been traveling more than 90 mph. Since that day she has been reluctant to discuss what happened, and has not not commented on who was driving the other car.

New accounts have placed the Honda's speed at "around 100," although investigators have said they have not established how fast it was moving. Two people who looked at the speedometer at the scene of the accident, Mitchell George and Rick Fontes, who work for Glenn's Towing in Waialua, said the Honda's speedometer needle was stuck between 80 and 90 mph.

"It looked like the speedometer was stuck at around 88 miles an hour," said Fontes.

Martin said investigators have only determined that the Honda was traveling at an "excessive speed." He said police are aware of the stuck speedometer and have photos of it. But he said the needle is only an indicator of the rate of speed.

"On impact the needle's going to jump either way, depending on the site or the angle of the impact," he said. "It can jump backward or forward. The needle gives us a very rough idea of where to start. We do a lot of mathematical computations.

"Speed will be established eventually."