Aradina Dela Cruz, a 51-year-old woman, was killed in Waipahu in Honolulu County on the night of August 25, 1991, when what had begun as a family rupture turned into a burst of violence inside her home. According to court records, the evening had started quietly enough: Aradina, her husband Santiago, their daughter Mabel, and their grandson had eaten dinner, watched television, and gone to sleep. Near 11:00 p.m., the calm broke when the front door was forced open.
Mabel awoke on the couch to the sight of a silver-colored gun and was shot along the side of the head. Her son, sleeping nearby, woke to her cries and testified that he saw Orlando Ganal Sr. in the light from the balcony before being shot in the mouth and fleeing to a neighbor’s house. Another family member, Diego Dela Cruz, escaped through a window with his wife and child, then climbed back inside and found his mother bent over a sofa, dead, while his father was sliding down the stairway, bleeding and mortally wounded. The Hawaii Supreme Court’s account says Aradina died from seven gunshot wounds.
The man identified in public records as the killer was Orlando Ganal Sr., Aradina’s estranged son-in-law. The court record describes months of tension before the shooting, including the collapse of Ganal’s marriage to Mabel, her move back into her parents’ home, threats, and a confrontation the day before in which Ganal pointed a gun during an argument. In the early hours after the attack at the Dela Cruz home, the violence did not end there. Authorities tied Ganal to a second attack in Kailua, where he set fire to the Touchette residence, causing additional deaths, and to another arson at Young Laundry. A Honolulu Star-Bulletin retrospective later summarized the August 25, 1991 crime spree by stating that Ganal went to the Waipahu home of Santiago and Aradina Dela Cruz, shot them dead, wounded his wife and son, and then set the Kailua fire.
There was an arrest. Court records say Honolulu police, already aware of the shootings and fires, recognized Ganal’s license plate as he drove home, followed him, and stopped him at his residence. Officers testified that he resisted as they tried to take him into custody, and he was handcuffed and arrested for murder. Investigators later searched his truck and recovered a spent shell that was matched to shells recovered at the Dela Cruz and Touchette scenes, a detail that helped bind the separate attacks together into one prosecutable case. In that sense, the case did not remain a mystery for long: the suspect was quickly identified, apprehended, and charged.
The legal case that followed was sweeping because prosecutors treated the killings and attempted killings as part of one larger course of conduct. Trial began in March 1993, and on April 7, 1993, the jury returned guilty verdicts on all counts. The Hawaii Supreme Court opinion makes clear that the first-degree murder count included the deaths of Aradina Dela Cruz, Santiago Dela Cruz, and two others killed in the related Kailua fire, while the attempted first-degree murder count covered surviving victims including Mabel Ganal. The same opinion states that a conviction for first-degree murder in Hawaii carried life imprisonment without possibility of parole, subject only to the state’s commutation process. A Honolulu Star-Bulletin report later said Ganal was serving that life sentence without parole.
So the story of Aradina Dela Cruz’s death is not one of an unidentified killer vanishing into the night, but of a family home shattered by someone already inside the family circle. Public online records portray her final hours as part of a chain of jealous rage and domestic terror that spilled across Oahu in a single night. The suspect was Orlando Ganal Sr.; he was arrested the next morning, tried, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison.
