3 men arrested in fatal Waikiki shooting
Police arrested three men Sunday in connection with a fatal shooting outside a Waikiki strip club.
The men were apprehended at an apartment building at 1650 Young St. around 4 p.m.
Police had earlier established a command center near Shriners Hospital for Children on Punahou Street after a black SUV believed to be the getaway vehicle in the crime was spotted a few blocks away.
Police partially evacuated the apartment complex and a neighboring building before executing the arrests.
A resident of the neighboring apartment building said police moved them to an area two blocks away and told them that the operation could take “a couple of hours.”
“But they were done in 20 minutes,” said the resident, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal.
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The resident said the people arrested were well known in the area for their loud, early morning parties.
“They’ve been pretty loud up there for the last few months,” he said. “You could hear them at 5 a.m. — gambling, yelling, making noise.”
Among the three taken into custody was 18-year-old Jordan A. Smith, who was arrested on suspicion of first-degree murder. As of 6:30 p.m. Sunday, the other two people arrested had not yet been booked.
The 5:45 a.m. shooting Saturday outside Club Alley Cat near Seaside and Kuhio avenues left a 22-year-old man dead and two other men, ages 27 and 31, hospitalized in stable condition, police said.
Witnesses said a man with a rifle fired shots into the air before directing 10 to 15 rounds at a crowd of about 20 people gathered outside the club. The man, described in a CrimeStoppers bulletin as a black man about 5 feet 7 inches with dreadlocks, fled in a waiting SUV heading toward Ala Wai Boulevard, police said.
Investigators closed off the alley fronting Club Alley Cat for several hours beginning around 5:45 a.m.
Waikiki Neighborhood Board Chairman Bob Finley said Sunday that residents have raised concerns recently about intoxicated people and late-night bars in that area, possibly because other areas in Waikiki have been improved, shifting the late-night traffic to Kuhio.
He said he felt police are doing what they could with limited resources to address problems in the neighborhood.
“It was terrible that someone would shoot a rifle in Waikiki,” he said. “It’s a terrible blow to tourism.”
Mark Smith, another Waikiki Neighborhood Board member, said he raised concerns about possible criminal activity on the same corner at the neighborhood board meeting last week.
“The worst of my fears actually occurred a few days later,” he said Sunday.
Smith said a resident complained to him about new people in the area who looked like they were trying to assert their control over territory on the corner and appeared to be gang-affiliated. The resident also complained about drugs and prostitution in the area.
Smith said he brought up the issue at the meeting because he wanted the Police Department’s gang squad to look into it.