Police locked down an Enchanted Lake neighborhood for more than eight hours Tuesday after finding weapons outside a house that was tented for fumigation.
Keolu Drive, between Kaelepulu Elementary School and Papalani Street, and Hamakua Drive, between Akoakoa Street and Keolu Drive, were closed to pedestrian and vehicular traffic shortly after the 10:15 a.m. call of a possible burglary in a home, said police Maj. Clyde Ho, Windward district commander.
The home was declared clear of danger at about 6:30 p.m., and roads were reopened shortly thereafter.
About 50 families were affected by the lockdown, Ho said.
Workers from Kama‘aina Pest Control and Termite arrived at the home on the 600 block of Keolu Drive and saw that the fumigation tent had been cut open, said Dave Melton, a manager for the company.
"As they kind of got closer to the house and started listening, they actually heard someone upstairs," Melton said. The workers left the area and called police, he said.
Kama‘aina uses Vikane, an odorless gas commonly used to fumigate homes against insect infestation.
Ho said Specialized Services Division officers and their SWAT vehicle were called in because a shotgun and a rifle were found just outside the home.
The owner of the home, recently widowed, identified the weapons as belonging to her late husband and told police "they were supposed to be in the house," Ho said. She also told police that additional weapons were stored in the house, police said.
That convinced police that the home had been burglarized and that additional safety precautions had to be made, Ho said.
"We were dealing with a suspect that possibly may have been armed," he said.
Specialized Services officers, armed in full SWAT gear including gas masks and oxygen tanks, entered the home in several teams through mid- and late afternoon.
A mechanized robot went in first to see whether there were signs of anyone in the house and the level of the toxic fumes in there, Ho said.
At several points officers used a bullhorn urging anyone in the house to step outside.
As of 6 p.m. police were still not sure what, if anything, had been taken since the homeowner had not yet had a chance to inspect the house fully.
Melton, from Kama‘aina, said burglaries at tented homes have actually decreased since a peak in 2009. "Now they’re actually more of a rarity than a common occurrence."
Inconvenienced residents had mixed feelings about the lengthy shutdown.
Ray Hauser, who set up chairs and a tent for dehydrated reporters, photographers and other strangers on his lawn at Keolu and Akoakoa, thought police were "overly cautious" handling the situation.
"The SWAT team going in three, four, five different times," Hauser said. "It seemed like they could have known early on what was going on, and known that there was nobody there even before they arrived."
Donald Ho (no relation to the major) caught TheBus back to Kailua after a shopping trip to town and waited more than four hours to get to his home several hundred feet from the scene. Other family members also couldn’t get home and were stuck at other roadblocks in the neighborhood.
"They’re here to protect the public and protect their people," Donald Ho said. "I understand and … what can you do?"
