Daniel Browne-Sanchez, a 27-year-old White male, was working off duty in the early hours of February 10, 2007, at Osake Sushi Bar & Lounge on Kapiolani Boulevard in Honolulu when the night turned violent. News reports and law-enforcement memorial accounts say a masked gunman came into the bar armed with a. 22-caliber handgun, fired shots into the ceiling and wall, and forced employees into a lounge area while trying to carry out a robbery.
Browne-Sanchez, a Hawaii deputy sheriff who was unarmed and helping at the bar as a bartender’s assistant, stepped in anyway. In the chaos, he tried to stop the gunman and wrestle him down, but he was shot multiple times. One report said he was hit three times, and another said the fatal wound was to the chest. He died in an act that coworkers and family later described not as recklessness, but as exactly the kind of courage they knew from him.
Police quickly identified and arrested John Koa Lorenzo Jr., also known as Patrick K. Lorenzo, then 32. Contemporary court reporting said he was taken into custody after the shooting and soon appeared in Honolulu District Court. Prosecutors accused him of killing Browne-Sanchez during the attempted robbery and filed a raft of charges tied to the attack, including second-degree murder, attempted murder counts, robbery, kidnapping, and multiple firearm offenses. Coverage at the time also focused on Lorenzo’s criminal history, noting that he had prior felony convictions and had been allowed to remain free to participate in substance-abuse treatment rather than being sent to prison months before the killing. During trial, the defense argued that the shooting was tied to a nightclub “protection” racket rather than a simple holdup, but prosecutors maintained that Browne-Sanchez was killed during a botched robbery attempt. There do not appear to be credible reports from the sources reviewed that identify any additional suspects charged alongside Lorenzo for Browne-Sanchez’s killing.
The case ended in conviction. In November 2007, a jury found Lorenzo guilty in Browne-Sanchez’s murder, along with kidnapping and several firearms-related crimes, though reporting shows he was acquitted on some counts, including first-degree robbery and an attempted first-degree murder charge involving more than one person. At sentencing in March 2008, the court imposed a severe back-to-back punishment described in coverage as life in prison plus additional years, with no possibility of parole for at least 50 years; one account summarized it as life plus 130 years. Long after the trial, the shape of the story remained the same: an off-duty deputy sheriff saw a gunman terrorizing a room and moved toward the danger instead of away from it, and the man accused of pulling the trigger was arrested, prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to spend the bulk of his life behind bars.
