Joshua John Santos, 38, a Hispanic/Latino man, was found shot in the early hours of March 18, 2019, outside a home on Plumeria Street in the Fern Acres area of Mountain View, in Hawaiʻi Island's Puna District. Police responding to a report of a shooting arrived to find him unresponsive with an apparent gunshot wound, and he was pronounced dead at the scene.
As detectives began piecing together what happened, the case shifted from an initial coroner's inquest into a murder investigation, and the medical examiner later determined he died from gunshot wounds to the chest, ruling the death a homicide. With the neighborhood still reeling, police identified a person of interest and issued an islandwide alert, asking the public for help locating Ryan Frederick Davis of Puna as the search intensified.
Within days, prosecutors and investigators moved forward: on the night of March 20, 2019, Davis was charged with second-degree murder, use of a firearm in the commission of a separate felony, and first-degree terroristic threatening, and he was held in custody with bail set at $310,000 pending his initial court appearance. Reporting based on court documents described a confrontation at the Plumeria Street residence leading up to the shooting, with Davis allegedly telling investigators he “had to kill” Santos.
Years later, the case concluded with a plea deal rather than a murder trial. On May 9, 2022, Davis pleaded guilty to manslaughter and carrying or use of a firearm in the commission of a separate felony—both class A felony offenses—after authorities said the shooting occurred at Davis' residence in Mountain View. In August 2022, he was sentenced to a 20-year prison term for the killing.
