HONOLULU, HI — Two Honolulu police officers were shot and killed Sunday morning while responding to a report that a woman had been stabbed by a tenant she was attempting to evict from a house in the affluent Diamond Head neighborhood, police said.
Honolulu Police Chief Susan Ballard said at a press conference Sunday night that officers Tiffany Enriquez and Kaulike Kalama were shot and killed by suspect Jerry Hanel at around 9 a.m. local time.
Soon after the initial shooting, reported by Hawaii News as Now, the house believed to be the scene of the incident caught fire and became engulfed in flames. More officers were dispatched to the developing scene as “thick black smoke” began to pour out of the home, Ballard said.
The fire police said Hanel set inside the home quickly spread, destroying seven homes and damaging many others before firefighters were able to bring it under control, Honolulu Fire Chief Manuel Neves said at the press conference.
Three people remain unaccounted for — Hanel and two adult females — and authorities believe they died in the fires. The fires are completely extinguished, but it will take several days for investigators to comb through the rubble to collect evidence.
The 69-year-old Hanel who had been living rent-free in the lower level of a home on Hibiscus Drive had a history of mental instability and disagreements with his neighbors, but had never been violent, his attorney, Jonathan Burge, told Hawaii News Now.
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He said the owner of the home had befriended Hanel, and she had always backed him up in the disputes, but had filed a court order for his eviction on Friday.
Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell shared his condolences to the officers’ families and friends, referring to their deaths as an “unprecedented tragedy for not only the City and County of Honolulu but the entire state of Hawaii.”
In a statement, Gov. David Ige said the state is grieving.
City Council member Kymberly Marcos Pine also released a statement, saying her “prayers and thoughts are with the families” of the Honolulu police officers killed and others injured in the shooting at Diamond Head.