Killing still haunts mother, daughter
By Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writer
Melissa Sennett doesn't sleep well anymore. Nightmares jolt her awake, the echo of gunshots ringing through her mind, touching the core of her like a shiver.
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And during the day, when self-control fails her, Sennett has been squeezed breathless by panic attacks. The flashbacks have been so intense that once she passed out.
Shane Mark last month was found guilty of second-degree murder for the death of Honolulu Police officer Glen Gaspar.
So much had gone so wrong on that sunny day last March.
Sennett had planned a reunion, not a murder.
She had wanted to give her daughter Shansy warm memories of a father the child barely knew — Shane Mark.
Instead, the child watched her father kill a police officer in the middle of a Baskin-Robbins ice-cream parlor.
"I think about it every day," Sennett said by telephone from her home in Kansas. "I feel responsible for it. We're in counseling for it, and I am on me-dication."
A jury last month found Mark guilty of second-degree murder for the death of Honolulu Police officer Glen Gaspar. The officer's final moments also haunt Sennett.
Just like Mark, Gaspar was there because of her.
Sennett had the best of intentions when she planned the reunion trip to Hawai'i. Because she and Mark had separated years earlier, Sennett viewed it as a chance for Shansy, then 10, and Mark to forge a bond they had never had before.
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The 30-year-old Sennett has lived on the Mainland since 1997. She had built a new life away from the physical and emotional abuse she said Mark had heaped on her.
Shane Mark stood behind his daughter, Shansy, then 10, at the Kapolei Baskin-Robbins, just moments before he pulled out a gun and shot and killed Honolulu police officer Glen Gaspar.
They had met as teenagers. Sennett was a year older than Mark, who was a 16-year-old dropout working as a fishing boat captain. When she got pregnant with Shansy, he worked hard to support them. But Hurricane 'Iniki wiped out the fishing boat and Mark got involved with drugs, Sennett said.
When he became abusive, Sennett left. When he threatened to kill her, she got a restraining order.
She had no desire to see him again. But she understood Shansy's desire to connect with her father.
Mark had been in prisons and jails for much of the child's life. As his release in November 2002 neared, he wrote so lovingly to Shansy that Sennett and her fiance brought the child to Hawai'i in late February.
"I thought maybe he had changed and was ready to be a father," Sennett said. "I gave him the benefit of the doubt."
The first meeting of father and daughter was short and uneventful. Shansy didn't know whether to call her father "Shane" or "Daddy," her mother said.
But the second meeting, in the parking lot of a McDonald's in 'Aiea, horrified Sennett.
That's when Mark bragged to his daughter about shooting a man five weeks earlier outside a Moanalua church, Sennett said.
"He even gave my daughter a newspaper clipping of the incident and said that he was wanted for attempted murder and that he was the third-most wanted man in Hawai'i," she said. "I thought why would you brag about that? Why does she even need to know that?"
Mark told Sennett he was never going back to prison, she said.
Mark showered the child with gifts: black pearl earrings, a gold watch, a gold ring, an 'ukulele and a violin. He even made his girlfriend take off a gold necklace and give it to Shansy.
Except for the violin, the gifts were placed in storage. Sennett suspects most of it was stolen.
On March 4, Mark called Sennett to arrange a meeting at the Baskin-Robbins in Kapolei. Sennett immediately called police.
Sennett, her fiance and Shansy waited for nearly an hour before Mark arrived at the Baskin-Robbins. He gave them a friendly wave and came inside.
They never saw the handgun he carried.
Even though the Moanalua shooting made him an attempted murder suspect, a gun was the last thing they expected him to have. Sennett told police he wouldn't bring a weapon when he saw his daughter, but she said she also added a caveat: "I haven't seen this man in seven years. I don't know what he is capable of."
Sennett's fiance brought a video camera to the ice-cream store to record what everyone had hoped would be another happy reunion.
Even though she knew about his role in the Moanalua shooting, there was no fear on her part, she said.
"I was never afraid of Shane," Sennett said.
Two minutes, maybe a little more, passed before police closed in.
"He was, I guess, desperate to not get caught," Sennett said. "And when he did, he just reacted. There is no excuse for it."
Mark went from father to killer right before his daughter's eyes.
"I was trying to grab her when the first shot was fired," Sennett said. "She turned around to look and the second and third shot went off."
Before the shooting, Shansy held tight to a fantasy about her father. He would "be this perfect dad," Sennett said. He would shower her with love.
Now she has trouble sleeping and won't go to bed with the lights off. She attends counseling sessions with her mother.
And she can't get the memory of the shooting out of her head.
"It is the only memory she holds on to," Sennett said. "She will never see him again, and she doesn't want to. She is a child who has to live with the consequences of what her father did."
Reach Mike Gordon at 525-8012 or mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com.
