Thomas Ballesteros Jr., a 42-year-old Native Hawaiian man, was killed on the afternoon of June 23, 2018, along Painted Church Road in the Honaunau area of South Kona. The call for help came in just before 3:00 p.m., and when officers arrived they found him dead at the scene. Two other men had been shot as well, and both were gone before police got there—one of them wounded badly enough that investigators treated him as the likely shooter.
As the first hours unfolded, detectives pieced together what happened on that rural stretch of road. Court records later described Ballesteros and a friend, Nikolaus Jason Slavik, stopping to pick fruit—mangoes were specifically mentioned in later reporting—on the mauka side of the road across from a home. A motorcycle passed them again and again, and after the final pass the rider parked, removed his helmet, and walked toward the pair. Words turned into a confrontation, and the encounter ended in gunfire: Ballesteros was shot fatally, while Slavik survived with multiple gunshot wounds. The shooter was also injured in the chaos.
Police identified the suspect as Brian Lee Smith of Honaunau. With help from Honolulu Police Department investigators, Smith was arrested on June 24, 2018, for Murder in the Second Degree and Attempted Murder in the Second Degree, with authorities indicating additional charges were still being considered. A few weeks later, the case took an alarming turn when Smith—being held on high bail—was mistakenly released from custody. A warrant was issued, and the error became public; ultimately, police reported that Smith called from a pay phone, disclosed his location in the Kona area, and was taken back into custody without a new escape charge being pursued as first suggested.
The shooting moved from roadside tragedy to courtroom saga. Smith went to trial in 2019 and was found guilty of second-degree murder in Ballesteros's death, along with other convictions tied to the violence and firearms, and he was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole with a mandatory minimum term set by the judge; additional consecutive time was imposed for related offenses. Yet the story did not end with that sentencing. In 2020, the Hawai‘i Intermediate Court of Appeals vacated the murder conviction and other key counts and sent the case back for further proceedings, concluding that limitations placed on cross-examination of the main eyewitness could have affected the jury's verdict—while leaving certain “prohibited possession” convictions in place.
Years later, the legal aftershocks continued. By 2025, reporting indicated Smith was headed back to court in connection with the June 2018 killing, reflecting how appeals and disputes over sentencing and trial issues had kept the case active long after the day Ballesteros was shot on Painted Church Road.
