One of the girls has a sister whose husband is dying of cancer and she started telling us about a phone call that her sister got. Long story short – the sister received a call from a relative talking about how their daughter came home for Christmas and was angry and disruptive. Prior to this trip home the daughter had always been nice and their family life was “normal” so because of her changed personality there was speculation that the daughter was on drugs. Christmas comes and the daughter didn’t get a car as a gift from her parents and her disposition deteriorated even further.

At some point (days or weeks, I don’t know) the daughter had her younger sister drive her over to her father’s house so she could borrow his car. (The parents are divorced and live on separate ends of town.) The sister leaves and the girl goes into the house and beats the crap out of her father, takes the car and drives over to the mother’s house and shoots the mother!

Somehow the father’s screaming for help was heard and he was rushed to the hospital. At the same time the mother was being rushed to the same hospital. Both were checked into the hospital with the same last name and no one made a connection that the two cases could be related.

By the time the police had connected the cases the daughter that had beat her father and shot her mother over not getting a car had disappeared. It took about a month and they finally tracked her down with her boyfriend “who has a record.”  The girl is in jail and her sister was cleared of any involvement.

Both parents lived but now have to go through the drama of going to court to testify against their daughter and live through the whole ordeal emotionally again.

A phone call like that to someone who is already suffering from her husband in the last stages of cancer must have been surreal.

Tonight there was a fundraising tweetup for P.A.S.S. (Pacific Alliance to Stop Slavery) at Big City Diner in Ward Center. There was a great turnout of probably 40 or so people. Lane, the owner of Big City Diner, donated 20% of all the proceeds from food purchased to PASS if you brought the coupon and redeemed it with your check. After everyone had pretty much finished eating there was a brief presentation about how bad sex trafficking is in Hawaii and throughout the US. The statistics in Honolulu are staggering.