Gregory A. Farr told police he was terrified that someone was trying to break into his Ewa Beach home when he fired a rifle through his front door, killing a neighbor who was intoxicated and mistook Farr’s townhouse for his own.
An Oahu Circuit Court jury Thursday watched a riveting 40-minute police interview with Farr taken a day after the April 15, 2018, shooting.
Farr, 37, was charged with manslaughter in the shooting death of Navy Chief Petty Officer John E. Hasselbrink, 41, whose blood alcohol level was 0.25%, more than three times the legal limit for driving. If convicted, Farr faces up to 20 years in prison.
The defendant told Honolulu police detectives he was asleep on his living room couch and awoke at about 3:30 a.m. to his dog barking. Farr, an Army veteran, said he heard someone turning the front door handle and dead-bolt lock, and trying to push the door in.
Farr said he called out, “Hey, who is it?” but got no response and called “hey” again.
He was recovering from ankle surgery at the time, so he crawled upstairs to retrieve from a guest bedroom a small rifle loaded with a single round. According to reports, the gun was an AR-15-style rifle.
Farr told police he stood on the stairs, four or five steps up, and yelled to his girlfriend, who was upstairs, to call 911. “I did say he’s trying to break in,” he recalled. From where he stood 15 to 20 feet away, Farr said he could see a man’s head through a window in the door.
That’s when he realized his daughter had fallen asleep downstairs next to a dog bed close to the front door, according to his account.
“I couldn’t move to her fast enough,” Farr said in the video, pausing as he wept. “I didn’t feel I could stop my daughter from getting hurt. She was right there.”
Honolulu Police Department Detective Robert Jones, who testified Thursday, said that on the day
of the shooting, Farr was
cooperative, waived his rights and allowed the house to be searched. Jones said Farr told him he was scared and couldn’t defend himself with his ankle injury.
Jones also testified Hasselbrink was shot in the neck from an angle.
The victim lived in the next townhouse building 141 feet away from Farr’s place and had been dropped
off by an Uber driver at
3:30 a.m. Hasselbrink was a fire control technician on the Pearl Harbor-based submarine USS Illinois. A 2019 Navy investigation found no misconduct by Hasselbrink, who never yelled, struck the door or acted belligerently, only merely attempted to open the door.
In the police video, Detective Alan Oku repeatedly asked Farr what he would have done differently.
“I would have gotten my daughter first,” he replied.
When asked whether it was his intent to fire the gun, Farr said, “I can’t say. My daughter was there. I just reacted.” He explained that his intent was to “just to stop him from coming in. I didn’t want anyone to die.”
“If he just said something, it would have changed everything,” Farr said in the interview. “I wouldn’t have shot if I knew my neighbors better. If I wasn’t injured, I probably would have roughed up the guy.”
At one point when Hasselbrink looked inside the home, Farr said he was “terrified” and yelled, “Who is it?” before holding up the rifle. “I wanted him to see it and go away.”
Farr also said in the police interview that he was aware of two burglaries on either side of his townhouse and countless package thefts.
He said he purchased the rifle in South Carolina in 2017 and brought it to Hawaii, but never knew he had to register it here along with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun he owns.
Farr enlisted in the military in 2004 and was medically discharged from the Army after serving more than six years for a torn trapezius muscle, and suffered back and shoulder problems. Earlier on the evening of the shooting, he said, he had taken a Percocet prescription painkiller for his back and drunk a small amount of alcohol.
