HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – A suspect has been charged with murder after a woman from Hawaii was found dead in Washington State.

Court documents say that Andy Chu, 25, is also being charged with assault for groping a nurse while hospitalized after the alleged murder.

Seattle police said they found the body of 26-year-old Zoey He in her boyfriend’s home in Olympic Hills on Saturday.

GRAPHIC WARNING: The article includes content that some may find disturbing.

According to court documents, Andy Chu, 25, by his own account, stated he had a memory of choking her, twisting her neck, and holding her down under the water in a bathtub.

The documents say that he further stated to police that he placed a white ball in the victim’s mouth to “fix her jaw.”

Court documents say the autopsy of the victim noted blunt force trauma to her face, head, neck, chest, arms, and legs. In addition, the autopsy revealed a large, heavy white ball that was lodged in her throat at the base of her tongue.

Officials say that Chu eventually left the crime scene and did not return.

Court documents say that after committing the murder, the Chu was later admitted to the hospital by friends.

While being provided medical care, Chu assaulted a nurse by groping her breasts and grabbing the back of her neck in an attempt to pull her down.

He is being held on $5 million bail.

His arraignment is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. on Aug. 28.

This story will be updated.

Copyright 2024 Hawaii News Now. All rights reserved.

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – One in seven youth in Hawaii ages 10 to 18 run away from home due to abuse, neglect, and family conflicts.

A new state program called Safe Places offers children support and a haven when they have nowhere to turn and aims to prevent homelessness and exploitation. It’s part of a national outreach and prevention program for youth in crisis and implemented with a project called Safe Spaces for Youth that was passed by the 2022 state legislature.

Roxanne Costa with the Salvation Army and Connie Bell-Mullen with Hale Kipa joined HNN’s Sunrise to talk about the program and encourage local businesses and organizations to become Safe Place sites.

A Safe Place is a business, church or community center that displays the yellow Safe Place sign that any youth can go to if they are in need of shelter or services. An employee there will sit with them until a counselor from the Hawaii Department of Human Services’ Office of Youth Services can get there and meet with them. A Safe Place staff member can also transport the child to a shelter if necessary. Sites who sign up to be a Safe Place get training.

“The Salvation Army is fortunate that we were a Safe Place site some 20 years ago due to our Executive Director at the time wanting a safe place for youth to go to if they were in need. So it was nice to have it re-started in Hilo. Also last year, the County of Hawaii had all of their Hele On buses become Safe Places for our youth. Besides that, our emergency shelter in Hilo and The Salvation Army Corp are Safe Place sites in Hilo,” Costa said.

If you’re a teen and need immediate help, look for the Safe Place sign on buildings and public transportation vehicles in your community. You can also text the word SAFE and the city/state or zip code to a nationwide, 24-hour service for youth in crisis 4HELP (44357). Within seconds, they will receive a message with the closest Safe Place location. Youth can also call 808-999-SAFE (7233).

Hale Kipa is implementing the Safe Place program on Oahu.

“We are currently in the early stages of development of the program as we are in recruitment of locations to agree to participate by becoming a Safe Place, and by having their staff go through the short training and display the program sign. The success of a Safe Place is highly dependent on the aloha and support for our youth from the community,” said Bell-Mullen.

If your agency or business is interested in becoming a Safe Place site, reach out to The Salvation Army Family Intervention Services in Hilo or Hale Kipa on Oahu, or call 808-999-SAFE (7233).

Copyright 2024 Hawaii News Now. All rights reserved.

By Brittany Peterson
Associated Press

MAUI, Hawaii — In the days after a wildfire ripped through a rural neighborhood in the Maui mountain town of Kula, residents were determined to do what they could to prevent a repeat. With donated hoses and some impromptu training, some even learned how to open a standpipe to attack flames themselves if needed.

It’s part of a self-reliance mindset that took hold after the blaze last August, when the Upcountry fire destroyed 19 homes. Since that blaze, which had firefighters trucking in water from elsewhere because of a loss in system pressure, the people of Kula are determined to do all they can to be ready for next time.

“Anyone around who sees something, you’re on duty,” said Mark Ross, who lost a rental property where he had planned to retire with his wife. Ross, who is among residents who learned how to tap the standpipe from a retired fireman using donated hoses to stamp out hot spots for months after the fire, called the training “kind of a lifeline for everybody who still lives in that neighborhood.”

The fire that hit Kula was far smaller than the one that devastated the historic town of Lahaina, about 24 miles (about 38 kilometers) away. At least 102 people died in Lahaina, the deadliest U.S. wildfire in a century, and thousands of homes burned.

But what’s happened in Kula in the year since has been a lesson in community-led recovery. Residents stood watch for months to protect their homes from flare-ups as roots smoldered underground. They cleared debris. They installed cameras to watch for signs of future fires. And they’re working to restore burned forests, including launching a nursery for native plants aimed at reintroducing a native ecosystem to an area that had been overtaken by thirsty invasive trees.

“They’re building infrastructure, but the beautiful thing is at the same time, they’re building social infrastructure,” said Rebecca Solnit, author of “A Paradise Built in Hell,” about the aftermath of disasters. “They’re deepening community and that is a major source of safety in a disaster.”

Kyle Ellison started a nonprofit after the fire, Malama Kula, that organizes volunteers to meet Kula fire victims’ immediate needs like clearing debris. It also bought and installed two advanced smoke detection cameras to watch over the town — a tool that Hawaiian Electric began installing across the entire island around the same time, and is widely used in California.

“We’re not going to wait for people to say it’s OK for us to do things,” said Ellison, who watched flames last year come within 10 feet of the home he was renting. “The community is just going to take action to protect ourselves.”

Residents are also urging officials to safeguard their water system and its pressure. Kula’s pipes ran dry last year because key pumps had no backup power when they lost electricity — a common vulnerability for towns across the United States. After last August’s fire, the Maui Department of Water Supply rented three generators for the Kula system. They kicked in during an outage last month to maintain water pressure, said department director John Stufflebean. The department is in a lengthy process of purchasing seven generators that will be distributed across the island, still about a year away, he said.

Residents have also been quick to flag any apparent weaknesses in the system. Scott Martin said he discovered a small pipe leaking on Pulehuiki, a narrow country road that slices through the heart of Kula, five months ago and reported it multiple times. He’s dismayed the leak only just got fixed last week.

The Upcountry water system, where Kula is located, leaks about 21% of its total supply, the agency said, above the national average of 14%. Stufflebean called that level “unremarkable” given the steep terrain, rocky soil and aging infrastructure, and said they had to wait on parts to fix the leak Martin reported.

“Welcome to Maui,” Stufflebean quipped when asked about the parts delay.

For Sara Tekula, executive director of the Kula Community Watershed Alliance, such stories reinforce why Kula residents need to be proactive: “We have to link arms, and sometimes they need us to remind them and hold them accountable,” she said.

She helps lead a nonprofit that formed weeks after the fire to restore about 100 acres of native forest where invasive black wattle and eucalyptus trees burned across dozens of private properties in Kula. Restoring private forests falls outside the scope of responsibility for local, state or federal agencies, although individual landowners can apply for grants through the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The charred trees will soon be cleared and replanted with species that thrived on Maui more than a century ago — koa, mamane, a’ali’i and ohi’a— before newcomers introduced thirsty trees from drier climates.

By the time federal officials arrived to determine how they could help, the nonprofit had held community meetings and worked out a strategy and a budget. Todd Ellsworth, a U.S. Forest Service post-fire and disaster recovery coordinator who met with the group, called their work “pretty remarkable.”

After raising $1.6 million in federal funds and private grants, the nonprofit is ready to break ground on a nursery for native plants and bought fencing to keep invasive deer from noshing seedlings in the young forest. They expect to begin planting during this winter’s rainy season, and Tekula hopes Kula residents will feel some relief in the coming months as they see the land begin to heal.

It will take years and additional funding to manually remove invasive seedlings as they grow, said Joe Imhoff, who is Tekula’s husband and, with more than a decade of experience restoring a 42-acre native forest near last year’s burn site, is serving as project advisor. Volunteers can do some of the weeding, but trained contractors will be needed to handle some dangerous work that requires rappelling into steep terrain.

But after a few years, the leaf canopy will begin to fill out and block light from invasive seedlings, which then won’t require as much manpower to suppress, Imhoff said. The native plants more effectively capture rainwater and moisture from fog than invasives, and they return more of the moisture to the environment, too — an aid in reducing fire risk.

Imhoff said hoping someone else will fix the problem doesn’t feel like an option.

“In the face of climate change and ecological collapse, the time is now to take care of our backyards around the whole country,” Imhoff said.