Suliasi Pakileata, a 19-year-old Native Hawaiian man, went to Shima’s Market in Waimanalo on April 23, 2022, and what should have been a quick stop ended in a burst of violence in the parking lot. Police said he was shot there and died from the gunshot wound, turning the familiar storefront and roadway into a sealed-off scene of flashing lights, evidence markers, and detectives moving with measured urgency.
Investigators described the killing as something that did not appear to be random, even as the public details remained sparse. In the days after the shooting, police acknowledged they were examining surveillance footage and other evidence, and they also said a firearm recovered at the scene was part of what they were evaluating as they tried to reconstruct the moments that led to his death. The case was classified as a second-degree murder investigation, signaling that detectives believed a homicide had occurred even if the full story—motive, sequence, and who pulled the trigger—was not yet being shared publicly.
One of the few human details released was that his girlfriend was reportedly with him at the market when he was shot, placing a close witness at the edge of the moment everything changed. Beyond that, officials offered little about a suspect description or a clear timeline of how the confrontation unfolded, leaving a sense of unfinished narrative hanging over the case: a young man killed in a public parking lot, evidence gathered, and a homicide file that immediately widened into questions.
In the publicly available coverage located for this incident, no arrests or named suspects were reported in connection with Pakileata’s killing at the time those accounts were published, and police did not publicly identify a person responsible. The investigation details that were released emphasized the evidence being processed—video, the recovered firearm, and other items from the scene—rather than a confirmed suspect pathway, suggesting that detectives were still working to lock down who did it and why.
