4 dead, 2 injured in shooting in Hawaii

Los Angeles, September 2 (IANS): Four people, including the suspect, were killed and two others injured in a shooting in Honolulu County, Hawaii, authorities said.

According to Honolulu police on Sunday, police officers responded to a residence in the Waianae Valley area shortly after 11:15 p.m. local time on Saturday.

Several emergency calls from the house in Waianae indicated that the neighbor was operating a front loader and ramming several cars into the house, Xinhua news agency reported.

Several people were in the carport and fled or attempted to flee when the suspect opened fire and hit the victims, police said in a press release. At some point, a 42-year-old male resident of the house shot the suspect with a pistol.

The resident who shot the suspect was arrested for first-degree murder, the press release said.

“Three people, including the suspect, were pronounced dead at the scene. Other people were taken to the hospital,” the department previously said in a Facebook post.

A few hours later, the department confirmed in an update that one of the injured had died in hospital and the other two were still in the hospital.

Honolulu police held a press conference on Sunday to discuss the incident, Xinhua news agency reported, citing local media outlet HawaiiNewsNow.

“There have been several incidents in the past few months and weeks, but this incident has nothing to do with that. It happened because of neighbors,” said Honolulu Police Chief Joe Logan. He added that the shooting was “not a random act, but a targeted one.”

The Waianae Valley area is located on the west coast of the island of Oahu, where the state capital Honolulu is located.

The shooting is the latest in a series of violent crimes in West Oahu.

As local television station KITV reported a few weeks ago, residents said they were “frustrated and fed up with the recent wave of violence causing chaos in the community” following numerous shootings and murders – many involving youth – adding: “The recent tragedies are forcing state leaders to step in and increase law enforcement here.”