The Murder Of My Neighborhood©

By now the world knows of the destruction of my quiet little neighborhood on Diamond Head and many have asked what really happened on that Sunday morning of January 19, 2020.

I was walking my three dogs like I do everyday and as I approached Lois Cain’s house, I heard a bloodcurdling scream…Jen Tema and Good Samaritan Ian Felix ran to it, as I approached…I saw Gisela King, the upstairs tenant on the ground bleeding from her legs, left arm, breasts, and face in the driveway screaming, “He tried to kill me.  He’s killed Lois”.  Jarda (aka Jerry Hanel, the tenant/handyman of Lois’) had attacked her…then Jen, and Ian dragged Gisela up to the street…I watched over Gisela for a few minutes while Jen got Gisela's husband and son out of the house and took them to Jen’s house across the street…I then went down the street to hail down HPD and the ambulance...

A HPD officer arrived and I said, “Don’t go down there, he has a gun…call for backup”…How did I know he had a gun?  It was my assumption, as I knew Jarda had defected in 1983 from the Czech Republic and was military trained, paranoid, and angry…a gun would be his first step for attacking…

Jen and the officer did go down the driveway and Jen yelled, “Jarda, where is Lois, please let Lois go”…Jarda, said nothing…when Jen came up she said to me all she could hear was the worst sound in her life...the sound of someone being bludgeoned to death…At that point, I knew Lois was dead…

The HPD backup team came within three minutes…I was now in the middle of the street…they walked down the driveway and then BOOM, one huge loud shot…Jarda had ambushed them through his side window…then more big shots, boom, boom, then rapid pow, pow, pow from the officers’ guns...

The officers were screaming, “Get down, take cover, officer down, officer down”…everything was moving so fast, it immediately became a war zone...

I ran to Jen’s house directly across the street from Lois’ house and hid behind Jen’s 24 inch concrete wall with my dogs… Jen and Ian then grabbed Gisela and ran down the street away from the shooting.

Jen's kids were now in her house that I was pinned down in...Jen yelled, "Don't leave my kids"...I yelled back, "I won't leave them"...

The officers dragged Officer Kalama near me by the sidewalk and were performing CPR…one officer was crying, another was yelling, “Come on, come on, come on”…then it seemed they all yelled together, “Get a gurney!”…When the gurney came, five of them placed Kalama on it and ran down the street…He was lifeless…I heard them saying another officer had been shot, but I couldn’t see Officer Enriquez…

The officers were screaming at each other to watch the windows and crouching behind their cars with their rifles out…the SWAT team arrived within ten minutes…and one officer took a position next to me…Lois’ house now started burning…then the second house caught fire…”Where’s the fire department?” I asked the officer…”We can’t let them in until we know the shooter is secured, we can’t risk them getting shot”…

Finally, the intensity of the heat and smoke became too much and the SWAT officer ordered me to get up and to the back of Jen’s house…within fifteen minutes more SWAT came and said I needed to evacuate the house because the winds were shifting and the house could catch fire…

I said, “My neighbor’s kids are in the house and I am not leaving without them…three officers then starting searching the house…”They’re not here”…I called Jen, “Where are your kids?”…”They are at my house”, she yelled into the phone…“They are not here Jen”…she started screaming, “Where are my kids?  FIND THEM!”

 The SWAT officers told me to leave again and I said, "NO! I'm not leaving without the kids"...more officers came and we broke locked closets, searched under the beds, the attic, everywhere looking for them at the same time yelling their names…Finally, after ten grueling minutes it came over the radio…"We found the kids, they're safe"...

The senior SWAT officer looked at me and said, “Okay, you need to evacuate NOW”…I said, “No problem”…another officer escorted me as I climbed over a wall with my dogs…he walked me up the hill to the back of La Pietra School where I went over another neighbor’s fence and into the school area…I was away from all the chaos and now safe…some La Pietra condo owners gave my dogs water and let me use their bathroom all the while offering me food, comfort, and a place to stay…They were so generous with their Aloha…

After I sat for awhile and posted my last video that the doggies and I were safe I walked down toward the street...I saw what looked like a thousand police, fire, FBI, EMT…I had never seen so many first responders in my life…Jen and Eric Tema ran to me and gave me the biggest hug and Jen said, “You never left my kids, thank you!”  A homicide detective came up and interviewed me and asked to take my phone…I said, “No, you can have my videos, but you’re not taking my phone”.  He asked if I would be willing to come to the police station and have my videos extracted from there and I said, “Okay”…

I went home and got the doggies some food, changed clothes, and met the detective who placed me in the back of a blue and white patrol car and off we went…another detective met me at the station…I commented that I hadn’t had my coffee yet and he got up, made me a cup, and then proceeded to “dump” my videos…afterwards he personally took me home…

As we were leaving the station, the Mayor, Police Chiefs, and Fire Captains were all walking in for their press conference…Jim Howe, who is the Chief of EMT and a good friend came up and gave me the biggest hug…I told him everyone from HPD; the detectives, the SWAT officers, the patrol officers had been so gracious and kind to me and to thank them all…he said he would…

Everyone has asked me why I kept taking videos and stayed; was it my ego so I could play the “Hero”?  The only real heroes that day were the fallen officers, Kaulike Kalama, Tiffany Enriquez, Jen Tema, and Ian Felix…those four saved many lives that day...

The answer for why I stayed is twofold, first, when I heard the shots fired, I could not move fast enough to go left or right down the street with the three dogs and the safest place for us was ten steps away behind the small concrete wall…from there I was trapped…I believed Jarda was going to come out in a blaze of glory so he could commit “suicide by cop” and I might be killed with all the bullets flying…and if I died I wanted my loved ones to know what happened…

The second reason was Jen’s kids…Jen is a close friend and her kids are like my own…I promised her, I gave my word I would not leave them…AND I wasn’t going anywhere without them, no matter what happened…

In life we all make choices and on that Sunday, with all the chaos and fear, I believe I made the right ones…