Just after nightfall on January 14, 2020, gunfire shattered the quiet of Kepauala Place in Waiʻanae. In the span of moments, Solomon Kaleiopu III—39, a Black man—was struck down at his family's home, alongside another male victim, after someone came to the residence and opened fire in the area of the garage/carport.
Investigators later described the shooting as an attack carried out by an unknown suspect who approached the property and fired on the two men as they stood in the
garage. With the shooter gone almost as quickly as he arrived, detectives were left to reconstruct the sequence from the fragments a violent minute leaves behind—spent casings, impact points, and the stunned recollections of those nearby.
What the public was told, in the days that followed, was that the suspect had not yet been identified and that the case hinged on help from the community. A possible suspect vehicle was circulated: a silver pickup truck or sport utility vehicle noted for a missing passenger-side mirror, a small detail that investigators believed could separate the right vehicle from a sea of lookalikes.
As of the most recent publicly available information located for this incident, authorities were still seeking tips to identify the person responsible, and no arrest, named suspect, or court case tied to the killing was publicly announced in the sources reviewed.
