Police yesterday continued to investigate two incidents in Mililani Friday in which elderly women were attacked and robbed.

Plainclothes officers were following leads on a man who punched a 75-year-old woman and stole her car early Friday morning in a Mililani driveway, said Wahiawa Police Capt. Moana Heu. Police were also investigating a second attack that evening in which two men robbed, kidnapped and assaulted a 78-year-old woman, who suffered a broken rib.

The two cases do not appear to be related, and police believe there were different attackers in the cases, Heu said. She said it was too early to say whether the cases are an indication of the elderly being targeted in the community, and said such incidents are unusual in the area.

"But it is alarming that the threat is escalating because now they're confronting people," Heu said, adding that the community has previously dealt with burglaries in unoccupied homes. "Of course, they're (the robbers) not confronting 6-foot, 300-pound guys. I don't know if they're perceiving these (elderly) people to be a compliant victim perhaps, that they're not going to try and fight back.

"The pressure is going to be on from us. The officers here are very diligent about their area of responsibility."

In the early morning incident on Friday, the woman arrived at a home to pick up her grandchild when a man dragged her from her car and punched her, causing injuries to her eye, knee and elbow. He drove off in the woman's car with her purse.

The second assault occurred that evening, when a woman went to investigate a call from a neighbor that two men were in her garage, police said. When she opened the garage door, one of the men pushed her to the ground, causing her to suffer a broken rib. The two men pushed the woman into the house and locked her in a bedroom, took several household items and a safe and drove away in the woman's car.

News of the attacks shocked at least some Mililani residents, and some noted the area has suffered a rash of burglaries in the past.

Mililani resident Liza McCall said Friday's attacks against the elderly women were "disturbing." She said her neighbor's house was burglarized a few months ago on a Sunday morning.

"This used to be a neighborhood where you don't have to lock your doors, and now we have to lock our doors and secure the house," McCall said. "I'm actually considering getting an alarm system."

Bruce Bottorff, spokesman for AARP Hawai'i, said the incidents are of great concern to the organization, although there doesn't appear to be a widespread trend of such crimes against the elderly. He said violent crimes against the elderly have not emerged as topics in recent conversations with AARP members and volunteers.

"Ultimately there may be a role that AARP can play in something like this if it rises to the level of a more widespread kind of danger," Bottorff said. "But hopefully, and I really am keeping my fingers crossed on this, these are isolated incidents that don't indicate any kind of broader trend emerging."

Still, Bottorff said criminals are likely to prey on easy targets, "so children and the elderly and the disabled and anyone who cannot always protect themselves ... these are the people that we need to be most watchful for and mindful of."

He acknowledged that Friday's early morning carjacking appears to be a random act and is difficult to guard against. But families and neighbors can take it upon themselves to watch out for one another, even doing something as simple as making sure elderly members are escorted to their cars, he said.

Reach Lynda Arakawa at larakawa@honoluluadvertiser.com.