A long standoff between Honolulu police and a barricaded suspect shut down Kapahulu Avenue, specifically between Ala Wai and Date roads, on Tuesday at 11 a.m. and continued into Wednesday, when an officer was shot shortly before 1 a.m.
The 50-year-old suspect, Robert Morris, wiped his face with a gray towel and settled down in his kitchen, streaming on Facebook, Morris announced: “We live everybody… Live from Kapahulu reporting from the inside.” Morris openly talked to his viewers in 3 videos, each one hour long, about the police shooting, his history of selling drugs, his history of listening to anti-police rap music, people who might have betrayed him by “ratting” him out, and his final request for his family to be flown out from Kauai’i.
In the final video, Morris acknowledged that he will face a long sentence and admitted that he will not make it out of the barricaded house.
Like Morris said, he has a history of dealing drugs and abusing drugs. In 2008, Morris was convicted of selling meth and weapons. As a result, Morris was sentenced to 81 months in prison and then admitted to a residential program at Sand Island Treatment Center.
Before the shooting happened, Police officers were sent to conduct a federal narcotics search operation. The DEA attempted to execute a search warrant at Morris’s home. As a result, Morris fired a shot during the encounter, striking the sheriff right in the hand, leading to the 16-hour standoff between Morris and the police. Morris stated this during one of his videos, “They came this morning, they pounding on my door. They broke my window and I shoot back at them.” DEA spokesperson Rosa Valle-Lopez says task officers “encountered an individual, who began firing a weapon. During this encounter, a task force officer from a partner agency sustained a gunshot injury.”
The officer who was shot sustained minor injuries and was taken to the hospital immediately to treat the wounds.
Even before the police appeared at the door, Morris acknowledged that the videos could reveal his location to the police.
During the encounter, Morris asked the police to fly his mother from Kauai so he could hug her before he went away, further reconfirming that Morris knew the consequences of his actions. During the livestream, Morris says, “My father, my mother not gonna be around by the time I get out. They’ll be long gone,” he said. “The time I’m looking at right now, they’re going to be gone.”
Throughout the entire standoff, civilians were not allowed into their homes. Rodney Hamao, a civilian, was one of the many unfortunate people who had a home in the area of the standoff. Hamao says, “I was hoping to take a nap.” Another civilian who shared similar problems was Barbie Dudley, a mother of 3 children. Dudley exclaimed to the officers that she needed to get her kids. The officers stopped her at the corner of Campbell and Herbert Street and told her she would not be able to go home and get her kids. Soon after, an officer went to the house and retrieved the kids, and sent them to Dudley.
The standoff finally concluded at 1 a.m. Morris was arrested and taken into custody, and people were allowed to go back to their homes. Recently, Morris has requested to see his family before he is brought into jail. Thankfully, no one was gravely injured, but this situation brought many questions: was the barricade handled efficiently, effectively, and was it fair to civilians who withheld homes in the area?
