Hawai'i residents, whose hearts go out to the grieving family of Wai'anae High School teacher Asa Yamashita, find it painful to contemplate the terrible tragedy of her death Feb. 27.

The killing of the 43-year-old woman — a role model for children, loving wife and mother — is an unfathomable loss to all. Her unprovoked assault at the hands of a knife-wielding attacker makes the crime all the more horrifying.

And yet, there's so much more information about this sad course of events that the public deserves and needs to know.

A chronicle by Advertiser staff writer Eloise Aguiar traced the information available on Tittleman Fauatea, the 23-year-old suspect arrested in the case, who has been in and out of the state mental-health and criminal justice systems for several years.

It's the events of the past 10 months, however, that need untangling, because they culminated in circumstances that leave residents rightly worried about assurances of public safety.

Fauatea was released from the O'ahu Community Correctional Center Nov. 29 after serving a brief sentence for harassment. The Department of Public Safety told The Advertiser that it had no "paperwork" to indicate he should have remained in custody, but a psychiatric evaluation six weeks earlier indicated he needed "at least another 60 days of treatment."

Whether state authorities had all the information they needed at key points in the case, and whether his transfer in and out of custody was handled correctly —through court appearances, medical treatment and prison sentences — is not clear.

Many of the facts of the case will become public, as they should, over the course of prosecution. But in the meantime, the state health and public safety departments, as well as the Judiciary, need to conduct their own internal reviews to be sure correct procedures were followed. And the public should be informed about these inquiries, to the extent that the information would not jeopardize prosecution or privacy concerns.

Mental-health treatment is complex, and links drawn to violent crime are often unfair. But this state's mental-health system has undergone too much scrutiny by federal courts to ignore the public questioning about its protocols and safeguards now.

And it's up to the public authorities — elected officials, department heads and others — to start probing for those answers.