Police in Hawaii release man who killed neighbor who fatally shot 3 people at gathering

HONOLULU — A man who was arrested on suspicion of murder after shooting and killing a neighbor who opened fire at a Hawaii gathering has been released from custody, police said Tuesday.

Three people were killed and two others injured in a shooting at a home stemming from a dispute between neighbors on Saturday night in Waianae, a west Oahu community. The shooter was also fatally shot by a resident, who was arrested on a second-degree murder charge, police said.

Honolulu police said the 42-year-old man was released pending investigation on Sunday night.

The identities of those killed were not yet released by the Honolulu medical examiner's office Tuesday.

On Saturday night, a family was hosting a gathering in a carport when a 58-year-old neighbor using a front-end loader rammed cars into the carport and opened fire, police said. Three women were killed. The 42-year-old man, who lives at the home of the gathering, shot and killed the 58-year-old with a handgun, police said.

Philip Ganaban, chair of the Waianae Coast Neighborhood Board, said he knows the families from both of the residences involved. He was still struggling Tuesday to make sense of what happened. The man who opened fired at the gathering was known as a family man, Ganaban said.

“We're still wondering what would trigger him so bad,” Ganaban said. “It was a bad decision he made.”

The 58-year-old was known to rent out space on his property for parties, Ganaban said. Earlier in the evening, some people at the gathering had been concerned about people renting the space and “burning rubber with cars going up and down the road,” Ganaban said.

That’s when, as police described, he used the heavy equipment with four 55-gallon drums containing unknown fuel to ram vehicles into the carport gathering.