Haaheo Kolona, an 18-year-old Native Hawaiian man from Honolulu, was out late on March 18, 2022, when the night at a scenic Round Top Drive lookout on Tantalus turned into something his friends would spend years reliving. Police said that around 2 a.m., a car pulled up to a group of males gathered at the lookout, and Nainoa Damon approached one of them with a gun pointed at his head, demanding property.
In the tense seconds that followed, another teen in the group drew a firearm, and the confrontation escalated into gunfire—Kolona was shot in the abdomen. He was rushed to a hospital in a private vehicle, but he did not survive.
Investigators said the people who came to rob the group didn’t arrive alone. Damon’s front-seat passenger—described as a male about 5'6", wearing a black ski mask and all-black clothing—ran with him after the shooting, and the pair sped off in a white 1998 Toyota Camry toward Nehoa Street. Even as the community tried to piece together what happened at the lookout, police publicly warned Damon was considered armed and dangerous while they searched for him.
By the next day, the manhunt ended not with a chase but with surrender. Honolulu police said Damon turned himself in on March 19, 2022, at about 2:10 p.m. at the Wahiawa Police Station. As the case moved from shock to courtroom timelines, the central allegation remained the same: the shooting happened during what authorities described as a botched robbery at the Round Top Drive lookout.
Two years later, the story was retold under oath. Reporting on the trial described eyewitness testimony that a masked gunman approached the group and waved a gun, and that the moment Kolona revealed his own firearm was the moment the deadly confrontation ignited; Damon maintained his innocence. On May 15, 2024, a jury found Damon guilty as charged, including second-degree murder, first-degree robbery, first-degree terroristic threatening, and firearms-related counts tied to the 2022 lookout shooting.
The case ended with a sentence that still left room for parole but none for forgetting. In August 2024, Damon—described in coverage as the son of a Honolulu police officer—was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole for the second-degree murder conviction, with a minimum term of 15 years before he can be considered for parole.
