Investigators connected a Kapolei attack and a McCully homicide through surveillance, family accounts and the victim’s vehicle.
HONOLULU, Hawaii — Police say what first appeared to be two separate emergencies on March 5 became a single island-wide investigation after officers linked a fatal stabbing in McCully and a near-fatal attack in Kapolei to the same 55-year-old suspect.
That investigative turn is at the center of the case. Officers first encountered John Nihipali Sr. at the Kapolei scene, where they subdued and arrested him. Only later, after a medical call in McCully was reworked as a homicide, did detectives say the evidence showed the same man had attacked both women. The result was a case built not around one witness or one confession, but around a sequence of physical details: a knife, a vehicle, surveillance footage, defensive wounds, family identification and the suspect’s movements between neighborhoods.
According to police, the first hard break in the case came on Kealiʻiahonui Street at about 4:15 p.m. Officers responding to a stabbing found Nihipali outside a residence, armed with a knife. Police said he approached a responding officer and did not obey repeated commands to drop the weapon. An officer then used a conducted electrical weapon, allowing police to disarm and arrest him safely. Inside the residence, detectives said, his estranged wife had been stabbed in the neck area after he entered the home. A 30-year-old man present in the house interrupted the attack, and the woman ran to a nearby neighbor’s residence to get help. She was taken to The Queen’s Medical Center at Punchbowl. By the next day, police said she remained hospitalized but was improving.
At that stage, officers were working a violent assault with a suspect already in custody. The second half of the case developed more slowly. Around 5:30 p.m., police were called to a residence on Fern Street in McCully after emergency medical personnel requested assistance. There, officers found a 53-year-old woman unresponsive inside the apartment she shared with her 15-year-old son. Detectives from the homicide detail responded and later changed the classification from an unattended death to second-degree murder after they found multiple stab wounds, including injuries on the woman’s hands that suggested she had fought back. Police said family members identified the victim’s boyfriend as the same man already under arrest in Kapolei.
From there, investigators built the bridge between the two scenes. Police said the boyfriend entered the apartment with the woman shortly after 10:30 a.m. and was later seen leaving alone shortly after 2:45 p.m. Detectives reviewed surveillance footage and determined that he then took the woman’s vehicle. That car was later found at the Kapolei scene, giving police a direct physical link between the homicide investigation and the attempted killing. Investigators said the suspect arrived at the Kapolei residence just before 4 p.m. The timing helped frame the day as a continuous chain rather than two random events. Lt. Deena Thoemmes said publicly that detectives believed the suspect fatally stabbed his girlfriend in McCully earlier in the day, took her car and then drove to the home of his estranged wife in Kapolei, where he stabbed her as well.
Police also said Nihipali was in a work furlough program and wearing a court-ordered ankle monitor at the time. That detail matters to the investigation because it may offer a second record of his movement, alongside video and witness accounts. Public police statements so far have not said whether detectives have recovered location data from the monitor, whether it triggered any alert or whether it exactly matches the route and timing now described by investigators. Those unanswered questions are important, but so far they remain unanswered. What police have stated publicly is narrower: he was on furlough, he was outside custody on March 5 and he was later charged with escape in the second degree along with the violent felonies tied to the two attacks.
The charging decision came quickly. On March 7, police said Nihipali had been charged with attempted murder in the first degree, murder in the second degree, attempted murder in the second degree, burglary in the first degree and escape in the second degree. He was being held without bail. Local reporting on court records said he had prior convictions for manslaughter, assault and sexual assault, and that he was serving a five-year assault sentence after completing a 20-year term tied to an attempted manslaughter case. Still, detectives have not publicly described a motive, released the names of the two 53-year-old women in the police summaries or provided a detailed account of the suspect’s statements, if any, after arrest.
What stands out in the public record is how the case was solved in stages. The surviving victim’s escape created the first live report. The suspect’s refusal to drop the knife put officers in direct contact with him. The discovery of the dead woman’s car at the Kapolei scene created the first strong tie to McCully. Surveillance and family identification then filled in the rest. In that way, the investigation unfolded almost backward: police arrested the suspect at the second scene before they had fully understood the first. By the time they announced the formal charges, the department had turned two separate calls into one connected prosecution.
Nihipali remained in custody without bail as detectives continued interviews and evidence review. The next major development is expected to come in court, where charging records and hearing dates may show how prosecutors plan to present the two-scene case.
Author note: Last updated April 2, 2026.