The 54-year-old president of a nursing home association in Makiki was shot and killed at the facility today by a fellow resident of the Punchbowl Homes Association, residents said.

The 11:20 a.m. shooting at 730 Captain Cook Avenue, between Emerson and Magellan avenues, involved a tenant in his 70s whose wife died about a year ago, residents said. The alleged gunman was arrested by police, residents said.

He has had difficulty with some of the other residents of Punchbowl Homes since his wife's death and had been pressuring the victim, Clare B. Silva, to be his girlfriend, said Gina Alapa, the association's vice president and a good friend of Silva's.

Silva is a disabled grandmother of three with a daughter who is stationed with the Navy on the Mainland, said resident Dorothy Wheeler.

The alleged gunman had been pursuing women in the seven-story, 140-apartment facility since his wife's death and was constantly trying to get them to go out with him, Alapa said. His late wife also was named Claire, but spelled it slightly differently, residents said.

Silva just wanted to be friends with the man, Alapa said, but the gunman became abusive and would yell at her, call her names and make obscene gestures.

More than a week ago, Silva called Alapa and said the man had apologized and wanted to get together again, but she rebuffed his overture.

Today, Alapa was in her room when she heard sounds that turned out to be gunshots.

A fellow resident called Alapa and told her to go to Silva's ground-floor apartment, unit 113.

The resident told Alapa, "Get down here, get down here," Alapa recalled. "It's about Clare. It's an emergency. Get down here."

By the time Alapa got to the scene of the shooting, she said, "They had stopped giving her CPR. They were putting her in the ambulance. All I could see was her arm dangling."

Honolulu police remained at the scene of the shooting today and have yet to make a statement.

Resident Charlotte Wong, 70, uses a motorized wheelchair and relies on an oxygen tank, and said the gunman allegedly hit her in the complexes' elevator a couple of weeks ago.

The man told Wong as he attacked her, "'You killed my wife, you killed my wife,'" Wong said. "I never hurt his wife."

Punchbowl Homes is a Housing and Urban Development housing project for senior citizens and disabled residents, tenants said.

Last month, a gunman burst into a North Carolina nursing home and killed a nurse and at least seven patients, including some in wheelchairs.

Robert Stewart, 45, allegedly went room by room shooting elderly victims until he was shot and wounded by a police officer, ending the killings.

Officials in North Carolina said Stewart had no known link to the Pinelake Health and Rehab nursing home and said it was unclear what triggered the killings.