KAILUA-KONA — Hawaii Police Department Officer Victor McClellan, who was just feet away from Officer Bronson Kaliloa when he was fatally shot last summer, took the stand first Thursday to recount for jurors the last evening working with his fellow officer.
McClellan July 17, 2018, began at 6 p.m. as officers were working 12-hour shifts during the 2018 Kilauea eruption. After finishing another call, around 9 p.m., he responded to the scene near Kukui Camp Road in Mountain View along with his partner to back up Kaliloa and another officer.
Kaliloa and his partner were sent to check on a broken-down Mazda that possibly contained Waiki, who was wanted on a bench warrant.
After approaching and giving verbal commands for some time, with little response other than the occupant opening and closing the driver’s door once and looking around from within the vehicle, Waiki, according to McClellan, said “OK, I’m coming out.”
“The next thing I heard was multiple gunshots, approximately five gunshots in rapid succession,” he said. Kaliloa was closest as the driver’s door opened.
The three other officers returned fire; McClellan said he shot 35 rounds at the vehicle. Kaliloa stumbled backward, tripped and fell. He landed on his rear before dropping down and laying down, he said.
“When we stopped, we were giving verbals asking, ‘Kaliloa, are you hit? Are you OK? Are you OK?’ No response,” McClellan testified, noting Kaliloa was lying on his back and covered in blood as he gurgled and spit out blood while looking straight at him.
It was then that officers discovered the Mazda was empty, and the suspect had fled.
With the only ambulance in the district busy on a call, officers tried to load Kaliloa into a marked patrol unit after learning the quickest an ambulance could arrive on scene was 15 minutes. But they couldn’t get him loaded into the rear seat.
They laid him on the roadway and Officer Joshua Baumgarner, a National Guard combat medic, began CPR while other officers covered, fearful that Waiki would fire more shots. Medics arrived about 15 minutes later.
“Every 5 seconds felt like 15 minutes,” McClellan testified.
As they waited, a large truck came up with a man wearing a bright orange shirt and holding a cellphone out the window.
“He’s 12 feet away recording it and I’m looking right at him as Officer Kaliloa is bleeding out,” McClellan said, noting he yelled at the man to put the phone away because his partner was dying before he drove off.
He then noticed another vehicle, a light-colored older-model Toyota 4-Runner, but didn’t know when it had arrived. He approached it and made contact with the occupant, who he recognized but did not know by name. He later learned it was Kiel Brende, who was sentenced last month to five years in prison after pleading guilty to hindering prosecution in the case.
He asked Brende to drive up the highway and if he saw anybody to call police and report it. Just two other cars passed before medics arrived. McClellan was relieved from the scene about 45 minutes after arriving.
McClellan was the first witness for the prosecution to take the stand in the trial of Krystle Ferreira, Malia Lajala and Jorge Pagan-Torres, who are accused of aiding Waiki on July 20, 2018, amid a manhunt for the man that ended in an exchange of bullets on South Point Road. Waiki was killed; an HPD officer suffered a nonfatal gunshot wound.
