The 54-year-old president of a Makiki resident association was shot and killed on Easter Sunday by a fellow tenant of Punchbowl Homes, residents said.

The 11:20 a.m. shooting at 730 Captain Cook Ave., between Emerson and Magellan avenues, involved a 70-year-old tenant whose wife died about a year ago, residents said. Police arrested Melvin Yoshida at the scene.

Yoshida has had difficulty with some of the other residents of Punchbowl Homes since his wife's death and had been pressuring the shooting victim, Clare B. Silva, to be his girlfriend, said Gina Alapa, 41, the Punchbowl Homes Resident Association's vice president and a good friend of Silva.

Police responded to a "suspicious circumstances" call shortly before 11 a.m. and found Silva with two apparent gunshot wounds to the abdomen, according to Honolulu police Maj. Frank Fujii. Silva was taken to an area hospital, where she was pronounced dead shortly before 1 p.m., according to Emergency Services Department spokesman Bryan Cheplic.

Police arrested Yoshida at the scene and recovered the handgun believed to have been used in the killing, Fujii said. The case was initially classified as attempted murder, but was upgraded to second-degree murder when Silva died.

Punchbowl Homes is a Housing and Urban Development project for senior citizens and disabled residents that is administered by the Hawai'i Public Housing Authority.

Silva was a disabled grandmother of three with a daughter who is stationed with the Navy on the Mainland, said resident Dorothy Wheeler, 64, treasurer of the Resident Association and another close friend of Silva.

WIDOWER PURSUED TENANTS

Yoshida allegedly had been pursuing women in the seven-story apartment building since his wife's death, trying to get them to go out with him, Alapa, Wheeler and other residents said. His late wife also was named Claire, but spelled her first name slightly differently from Silva, residents said.

Silva misunderstood his intentions and just wanted to be friends with Yoshida, but he became abusive and would yell at her, call her names and make obscene gestures, then apologize, Alapa and Wheeler said.

More than a week ago, Silva called Alapa and said Yoshida had phoned her and apologized, wanting to get together again, but she rebuffed him.

Yesterday morning, Alapa was in her room when she heard loud noises.

"I didn't know it was gunshots," Alapa said. "I thought it was someone making noise with the garbage dumpster."

A fellow resident called Alapa and told her to come to Silva's ground-floor apartment, unit 113. The woman 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 reached Silva's apartment, she said, "They had stopped giving her CPR. They were putting her in the ambulance. All I could see was her arm dangling."

A half-dozen residents said they had never heard the suspect talk about having a gun in the secured, cinder-block building.

ABUSE ALLEGED

Two residents, however, said that Yoshida had been abusive and attacked them physically in the past few weeks.

Charlotte Wong, 70, who uses a wheelchair and a portable oxygen tank, said that "a couple of weeks ago" Yoshida confronted her in the elevator and started shouting: "You killed my wife! You killed my wife!" and struck her.

"I never hurt his wife," Wong said.

Honolulu police remained at the scene of the shooting yesterday, as a man mopped up blood in the hallway outside Silva's unit, which had stickers in the window saying "Beware of the Cat" and "My Daughter is in the U.S. Navy."

Residents sat quietly in the entrance hallway watching police and reporters come and go. A table in the hallway had a basket of Easter eggs and vases of artificial roses and buttercups.

"Easter Sunday," one lady said sadly, shaking her head.