2 officers killed in Honolulu shooting

HONOLULU — A man shot and killed two police officers Sunday as they responded to an assault call at a burning home in a leafy neighborhood beneath the rim of a famed volcanic crater near Waikiki Beach, authorities said.

The officers found a woman at the scene with a stab wound to her leg, and the gunman opened fire as police arrived, killing officers Tiffany Enriquez and Kaulike Kalama, said police Chief Susan Ballard. She said the suspect as well as two women who were in the home were unaccounted for.

Ballard said authorities would continue to search for the shooter, but that is likely that he was inside the home when it burned.

The homeowner, Lois Cain, had recently sought to have a man evicted, court records showed. A neighbor, Dolores Sandvold, said she saw Cain being loaded into an ambulance with knife wounds.

Flames emerging from the home soon spread to several others. Honolulu fire said five homes were “complete losses.”

The neighborhood is at the end of the Waikiki Beach between the Honolulu Zoo and Diamond Head State Monument, a volcanic crater that looms above Honolulu.

According to court records, the man living in Cain’s home was Jaroslav “Jerry” Hanel. Neighbors described him as mentally disturbed.

Attorney Jonathan Burge has represented Hanel in various disputes with neighbors. Burge said he never knew Hanel to be violent, but that “he’s kind of a quirky guy and had problems.”

“Maybe that’s what set him off,” he said of the eviction.

Hanel lived for free at the home in exchange for handyman work, Burge said.