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Man Wounded by Officer Reported in Stable Condition 09-24-01

HAWAII COUNTY POLICE DEPARTMENT
HILO CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION SECTION
LIEUTENANT DEREK D. PACHECO
PHONE: 961-2252
SEPTEMBER 24, 2001

MEDIA RELEASE UPDATE

A 51-year-old Puna man shot by police was reported in serious but stable condition Monday afternoon (September 24, 2001) at the Hilo Medical Center.

Police have also identified the man as Paul Sandy, of a Hawaiian Paradise Park subdivision address.

Sandy was shot late Sunday after police and rescue personnel responded to a 10:09 p.m. call of behavior disorder and property damage. Police dispatchers who received the call sent Puna patrol officers and a fire rescue squad to a residence on 23rd Avenue off Makuu Drive.

Three Puna patrol officers arrived at the scene, a two-story residence, to find that Fire Department rescue personnel had already got there.

Observing blood on a window, the officers knocked on the door and called inside Sandy’s apartment on the ground floor of the house. When no one answered, the officers got the landlord, who lives upstairs, to open the downstairs door for them.

Once inside, the officers found the man who was sitting on a couch seriously wounded and apparently trying to wound himself further with a pair of scissors. The officers tried to talk the man into putting down the scissors so fire rescue personnel could take him to the hospital.

The man appeared to calm down, then jumped up, raised the scissors in a threatening manner and advanced steadily toward the officers.

One of the officers tried to disarm the man with pepper spray, but the man kept advancing. The man backed one of the officers into a small kitchen with no other way out. The trapped officer, a veteran of more than 10 years, then shot the man once in the chest with his service firearm. The wounded man fell at the officers’ feet, and the officers immediately disarmed him.

Though wounded, the man was still thrashing and had to be strapped into a gurney before rescue personnel could put him in an ambulance. They transported him to the Hilo Medical Center for treatment of his wounds and for psychiatric evaluation.

Sandy was arrested for one count of terroristic threatening and released pending further investigation by Hilo Criminal Investigation Section detectives.

As required by department procedures, detectives assigned to the Internal Affairs Section are also conducting an administrative investigation into the shooting.

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