Hawaii
Chilling details emerge after schoolmate arrested in Hawaii girl’s 1977 murder
Former Hawaii lawmaker Suzanne Chun Oakland remembers arriving at school one morning in 1977 to an eerie buzz.
The 15-year-old had met up with girlfriends as usual before class at Honolulu’s McKinley High School when she learned a student named Dawn Momohara had been found dead on the second floor of a school building.
“I don’t know how we got word of it, but everything spread really quickly,” Chun Oakland said.
Chun Oakland didn’t know Momohara, who was 16, but the unsolved death has haunted her and other McKinley students and staff for nearly half a century. That was until last week, when police used advances in DNA technology to arrest a 66-year-old resident of a Utah nursing home.
The suspect, former McKinley student Gideon Castro, was scheduled to make an initial court appearance Friday before a judge in Salt Lake County District Court. He remained in custody Thursday with the bond for his release set at $250,000, according to Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office records.
Castro’s attorney, Marlene Mohn, did not respond to email and phone messages seeking comment.
Momohara had been sexually assaulted and strangled, police said.
“I was just really sad,” Chun Oakland recalled earlier this week. “I think for our student body, of course there’s that concern that what if he’s still out there and he does it to somebody else.”
On March 21, 1977, shortly after 7:30 a.m., Honolulu police found Momohara dead. She was partially clothed and lying on her back with an orange cloth tied around her neck, said Lt. Deena Thoemmes, of Honolulu Police. A subsequent autopsy ruled Momohara was strangled to death, and the medical examiner said there were signs of sexual assault.
Details from more than four decades ago are fuzzy for 1967 McKinley graduate Grant Okamura, who was the school’s 28-year-old band teacher in 1977, but the morning Momohara was found has remained a core memory.
Momohara’s sister — one of his flute players — arrived at school that day not knowing her sister had been found dead, he recalled. The sister was called to the office and later walked into the band room, devastated.
“The other students were trying to console her,” Okamura said. “At that point, I couldn’t have band. How do you have a class? She just sat there crying.”
She didn’t return to school for weeks afterward.
He doesn’t remember the sister’s name. The Associated Press was unable to make contact with any possible relatives. Okamura said he met Momohara a few times when he let her into the air-conditioned band room to wait for her sister.
The morning before Momohara was killed, she got a call from an unknown male and told her mother she was going to a nearby shopping center with friends. That was the last time her mother saw her, police said.
Police released sketches of a person of interest and a possible vehicle described by witnesses as a 1974 or 1975 Pontiac Lemans. A witness reported seeing the car when he and his girlfriend drove through campus the night before Momohara died. The witness saw a man and the car on the grass near the school’s English building, Thoemmes said.
The witness circled back around but the car and the man were gone.
Police were unable to identify a suspect and the case grew cold, though grief lingered over the campus.
Although police retrieved an unknown man’s DNA sample from the teenager’s clothing, they could not identify a suspect. Authorities would not develop meaningful leads in the homicide until decades later.
In 2019, cold case detectives asked a forensic biology unit to examine several items of evidence from the scene, including Momohara’s underwear. They were able to develop a DNA profile in 2020. Then, in 2023, police received information about potential suspects, two brothers who were interviewed in 1977.
Several days after Momohara was killed, detectives interviewed Castro, who graduated from McKinley High in 1976. He said he met Momohara at a school dance that year and last saw her at a carnival on campus in February 1977. Police interviewed his brother, who also met Momohara at the dance.
In November 2023, Honolulu police went to Chicago, where the brother was living. They “surreptitiously” obtained DNA from one of the brother’s adult children, Thoemmes said.
Lab findings excluded the brother as a suspect, but a DNA sample from Castro’s adult son, and later from Castro himself, proved he was responsible, Thoemmes said.
He was arrested last week at the nursing home where he lived in Millcreek, just south of Salt Lake City, on suspicion of second-degree murder.
Neither Okamura nor Chun Oakland remembered Castro.
Chun Oakland graduated in 1979 and grew up to become a Democratic member of the Hawaii Senate. She said Momohara’s killing bothered her over the years, especially when she would meet victims through her work as a lawmaker or as a board member of the nonprofit Sex Abuse Treatment Center, a statewide program provding services for sexual assault survivors.
Chun Oakland said she is grateful an arrest was possible even after all these years.
“I think the community in general, and our elected officials, they know the importance of trying to preserve the evidence that can someday be able to see justice for that individual or individuals,” she said.
A 32-year-old Pahoa man on probation for auto theft pleaded not guilty Thursday to sex assault charges.
Hilo Circuit Judge Peter Kubota maintained Brandon K.C. Sanchez’s bail at $108,000 and ordered him to return to court for further proceedings on Oct. 9.
A Hilo grand jury on Wednesday returned a five-count indictment charging Sanchez with second-degree sexual assault and four counts of fourth-degree sexual assault. He was also charged with five counts of violating probation.
According to court documents filed by police, the alleged offenses took place on the evening of June 15 and the victim was a 21-year-old woman.
The woman reportedly told police she had just met Sanchez when he was a customer at the Hilo fast-food restaurant where she worked. She agreed to hang out with him and allowed him to drive her car.
Sanchez drove to Honolii, and at one point told the woman he had recently gotten out of jail and wanted to have sex with her, which led to her telling him no multiple times, according to the documents.
Sanchez allegedly then asked if she’d kiss him, to which she assented under the condition that he stop the pressure to have sex.
On the way back to Hilo, Sanchez reportedly touched the woman’s breast and genitals through her clothing, put his mouth on her breast, and slipped a finger inside her genitals — all against her will.
Documents state that Sanchez admitted to police that he touched the woman’s breast through her clothing once, but denied all other allegations.
Second-degree sexual assault is a Class B felony offense that carries a maximum sentence of 10 years imprisonment. Fourth-degree sexual assault is a misdemeanor that carries a potential one-year jail term.
Sanchez remains in custody at Hawaii Community Correctional Center in lieu of bail.
Email John Burnett at john.burnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – A hiker was rescued after suffering a medical emergency on the Diamond Head Crater Trail Saturday morning.
The Honolulu Fire Department said crews responded at about 10:30 a.m. after a woman in her 30s became unable to descend from the top of the trail.
Firefighters climbed the trail on foot while another crew prepared a nearby landing zone for air operations.
HFD’s Air 1 helicopter inserted rescue personnel to the woman’s location, where they assessed her condition and provided basic life support.
The hiker was then airlifted to the landing zone and transferred to Honolulu Emergency Medical Services shortly after 11 a.m.
No firefighter injuries were reported.
Copyright 2026 Hawaii News Now. All rights reserved.
Hawaii
Filipino dignitaries embrace RIMPAC hospitality amid outside protests – Hawaii Tribune-Herald
Aboard the Philippine navy ship BRP Miguel Malvar on Wednesday night, prominent members of Honolulu’s Filipino community rubbed shoulders with military personnel and diplomats as they wined and dined on its deck in Pearl Harbor before the ship set sail to join other warships participating in the biennial Rim of the Pacific exercise.
“This warm atmosphere, the smiles, enthusiastic conversations truly echo the spirit of Filipino hospitality, or bayanihan … central to Filipino psychology, which means we see ourselves in others,” said Vice Admiral Jose Ezpeleta, the Philippine navy’s top officer, as he addressed attendees at Filipino Community Night reception.
“These cherished Filipino values and rich heritage are primarily reflected and carried out by you, our Filipino community,” Ezpeleta said. “Serving as a final bridge that links the Philippines to the United States cultures and peoples, and beyond defense and security, these vibrant people-to-people ties clearly form part of the foundational cornerstone of the Philippines and the United States of America.”
But outside the base’s gates on Kamehameha Highway, about 20 protesters carried signs and shouted slogans condemning the Philippine military’s participation in RIMPAC. During the protest, part of the group went to the base’s Halawa Gate and stood outside it until base security officials asked that they step back and return to the road.
The group included members of the Ho‘opae Pono Peace Project, Anakbayan Hawaii, Democratic Socialist of Oahu, Hawaii Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, Social Medicine Hawaii, and the Filipino Artist Movement.
“Everyone here is here because they love someone and they know someone that’s been impacted by U.S. militarism across the world” said Silayan Camson, a member of Filipino Artists Movement. “We’re all united in that struggle. U.S. militarism is one of the number one polluters in the world, and it has also spread across not only in the Asia-Pacific, but also in the Middle East, and that impacts day-to-day working people here, not only here in Hawaii, but across the oceans into the Philippines.”
In a statement preced-ing the protest, the HICHRP said that “while mainstream media views RIMPAC as providing valuable opportunities for the Philippine Navy to enhance interoperability with its allies and partners, the Philippines continues to enter into military agreements with the U.S. at the expense of its people.
“Filipino citizens risk becoming collateral damage amidst increasing U.S. tensions with China,” the group said. “Recent events, including the massacre of 19 individuals, including two Filipino-Americans in Negros Occidental, highlight the dire human rights situation in the Philippines.”
The American citizens in question were Lyle Prijoles, 40, and Kai Dana-Rene Sorem, 26. Both had friends in Hawaii, who gathered with local activists to hold vigils after their deaths. They were among a group of activists and researchers taking part in a program put together by leftist organizers taking them into the countryside.
They were killed in a controversial operation by Philippine army troops hunting down members of the New People’s Army — the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines — in the town of Toboso.
The Philippine military described it as an hours-long gun battle with rebels that wounded one soldier before they ultimately called in air support, while activists say indiscriminate strafing fire from the sky rained down on helpless civilians below. The NPA has confirmed that 10 of those killed in the incident were armed members of the group, but maintains the other nine were unarmed civilians.
“The U.S. has been assisting and aiding the Philippine military and its human rights abuses,” argued Camson, who told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that Prijoles and Sorem were “learning about Filipino struggles in the Philippines, they were unjustly murdered by the Philippines military, and the Philippines military has continually neglected its people.”
Manila has sought to deepen military ties with countries around the region as it has been locked in a bitter dispute with Beijing over maritime territorial and navigation rights in the South China Sea, a busy waterway that nearly one-third of all global trade travels through.
Beijing claims nearly the entire sea as its exclusive territory over the objections of most neighboring countries and many others around the world who depend on goods flowing through it. In 2016 an international court ruled in favor of the Philippines and found that China’s claims have “no legal” basis.
China rejected the ruling and has built bases on disputed islands and reefs. The Chinese military also has harassed and sometimes attacked fishermen and other marine workers from the Philippines, including scientists trying to study the ecological impacts of operations in the area.
“The officers and sailors aboard this ship are more than members of our Armed Forces of the Philippines,” said Consul General Arman Talbo, the Philippines’ top diplomat in Hawaii. “They are our fellow Filipinos, our sons, our daughters, our brothers, our sisters, who have chosen a life of service. Their dedication helps safeguard our nation’s sovereignty, protect our people, and contribute to regional peace”
“The presence of this remarkable ship in Honolulu is the source of great pride for the Filipino community here in Hawaii,” Talbo said. “As one of the Philippine navy’s newest and most capable vessels, BRP Miguel Malvar reflects our nation’s steadfast commitment to modernizing its armed forces and strengthening its ability to secure peace, security, and stability in the Indo-Pacific.”
The U.S. military, for its part, has conducted frequent “freedom of navigation” operations through the region, increasingly in partnership with other countries, and frequently makes use of Subic Bay and other ports in the Philippines to support its operations.
While U.S. troops left permanent bases in the country in the 1990s after nationalist protests led to their eviction, training rotations by American forces and now those from other countries have increased amid tensions with China along with port calls by warships. Last year, President Donald Trump and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. announced plans for Subic Bay to become a new arms manufacturing hub.
Camson argued that “Filipinos and the Philippine budget should be going toward people’s rights and education … The working conditions and working-class people of the Philippines are struggling while their leaders are busy participating in RIMPAC when they should be focusing on how to help Filipinos both in the U.S. and back in the Philippines.”
The Philippines is also among the most likely staging areas U.S. troops would use to respond to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The Philippine military’s top commander, Gen. Romeo Brawner, told his troops in the northern tip of the country last year to “start planning for actions in case there is an invasion of Taiwan.”
Brawner, an alumnus of the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Waikiki, asserted in his remarks that “if something happens to Taiwan, inevitably we will be involved. There are 250,000 (overseas Filipino workers) working in Taiwan, and we will have to rescue them.”
The Philippine navy also has sent ships, including the Malvar, to train as far away as India and Australia. Talbo said that he sees it as a source of pride that the Philippine navy can now regularly sail its ships across the vastness of the Pacific, arguing that years ago that would have been unthinkable.
Star-Advertiser photo editor George Lee contributed to this report.
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