After decades of marriage, Andrea and Jerry Decker were still very much in love. In fact, the couple would’ve celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary on Feb. 6.
On March 12, however, it’ll be a year since Jerry Decker — who was a hale and hearty 75 — was struck and killed by a pickup truck as a result of a three-vehicle collision on Highway 11 in front of the Mountain View post office.
“When we first moved here, the small little post office, it was adequate,” Andrea Decker, who’s now 80, said Monday. “But it’s no longer big enough. And it’s dangerous now.”
Jerry Decker had just come out of the post office during the noon hour and was waiting to cross the highway to get to his vehicle to drive home. According to police, a 42-year-old man driving a 2003 Toyota pickup from the Volcano direction made a left turn into the post office parking lot and was struck by a 2017 Ford bus heading toward Volcano driven by a 30-year-old Kona man.
The collision resulted in the pickup truck making what police called “secondary impacts” with an unoccupied Subaru sedan in the post office parking lot — and with Jerry Decker, who died a little more than two hours later at Hilo Medical Center.
“Rarely, rarely do we have parking. You have to go across the street and park. There’s a curve coming down,” Andrea Decker said, referring to the mauka direction on Highway 11. “When you leave, you have to cross the street. There’s a crosswalk. You look both ways and you almost have to run across.
“The school bus stops there and lets kids off there. That’s troublesome. People don’t pay attention, too. They don’t care. There’s speeding in both directions. I’ve seen them overtake (other cars) there. It’s a concern for everybody.”
A letter by Mountain View resident Grace Miles published in the April 18, 2019, edition of the Tribune-Herald described the village’s post office as “inadequate for the growing community it serves and has no parking or safe place to pull in from the highway.”
According to a police statement on March 13, 2019, it’s believed both speed on the part of the Ford bus and inattention by the driver of the Toyota pickup were factors in the collision but, to date, no criminal charges have been filed.
County Prosecutor Mitch Roth said Friday police have routed the investigation into the crash to his office. He said the case is being investigated as a second-degree negligent homicide, a Class C felony that carries a possible five-year prison sentence upon conviction since Jerry Decker, as a pedestrian acting in a lawful manner, is classified by statute as a “vulnerable user.”
According to Roth, the statute of limitations gives prosecutors three years from the date of the collision to file charges.
“I don’t want to come off as a vengeful person with a need for someone to pay for it,” Andrea Decker said. “But I don’t want somebody else to go through this. This man was strong and healthy. Nothing was wrong with him. Nothing.”
Jerry Decker was a carpenter and carpentry foreman who retired at 62 because he wanted to spend more time with his family and pursue his passions for hunting and fishing, Andrea Decker said. She added that her husband rode a bicycle at least an hour daily around Fern Acres, where the couple lived.
“He was a hard worker. He took care of me. If he knew something needed to be done, he did it. And he’d start it right away,” Andrea Decker said.
Sara Pukahi, Andrea Decker’s granddaughter, described Jerry Decker — a step-grandfather she lovingly called “grandpa” — as “funny and shy” and “amazing.”
“He had a cute little sense of humor,” Pukahi said. “His crew loved him. Everybody loved him. He was really talented. He built their home. He built his daughter’s home with his bare hands. I grew up watching him build things and add on to the house. And he had a shop where he’d build jewelry boxes — little things and big things.
“He was insanely creative.”
Pukahi said the fatal collision came as “a shock, of course,” for her grandmother.
“My grandpa was everything to her. It was my grandpa and tutu,” she said. “They did everything together. If she went to the store, he went with her. He looked after her and make sure she was OK. He would fill up the water bottle for her and carry it out because it was too heavy for her.”
Andrea Decker is dealing with multiple health issues but, out of necessity, is becoming more self-reliant.
“Over a period of time, she started to do more and more for herself,” Pukahi said. “I think she found a divine sort of strength because she started doing things on her own. Now she’s driving more and doing more around the house.”
Asked what justice would look like in regard to her husband’s death, Andrea Decker said, without hesitation, “A safe post office.”
“Larger, safer, so people won’t have to worry about it,” she added. “That would honor him, because he always said, ‘Someday, someone is going to get killed there.’ And he was the one who got killed.”
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
