Elia Laeli was someone I only knew for a very short time.
We both went to Kawananakoa Middle School in the mid-90s.
He mostly stood out because he was big for his age. He was already 6 foot 2 in, tied with another big guy on campus Colin Kealoha!
I met him on an 8th-grade field trip to the Big Island. Elia seemed like a chill dude, mostly cracking jokes.
I never had him in any classes, but those who did have positive things to say about him.
But after 8th grade, I never saw him again. I went on to McKinley High School (should be renamed Honolulu High School) whereas Elia went to Roosevelt High School. I read from the newspaper's sports section that he went on to play football for a community college in California, then to the University of Utah.
But after that? I heard nothing about him. He had no social media presence. Nobody on my Facebook friend's list had photos of him.
It was like the person who stood out in middle school just disappeared.
Then last month tragedy struck.
On 8/14/2021, Elia Laeli was shot & killed by Honolulu Police after it was alleged that he tried to attack them with a machete. (No body-camera footage has been released to the media). Before he attacked police, somebody reported that he attacked another person with a machete and chopped off that person's finger.
It was hard enough for me to believe that it would be the same person I knew from middle school. The only violence I knew from him was when he was fighting another big guy on campus. And even then, people who had classes with him were shocked because otherwise, he wasn't a bully. Nobody thought of him as a guy who would grow up to attack cops with a machete.
In the same news article that mentioned that it was Elia Laeli that was killed by police over the incident, it mentioned he was 41 (I'm only a few weeks away from that age), but his photo looked a lot older than that! He looked like he was in his 60's. Even other people commenting on the article noted that!
Yes, he was big for his age in middle school, but I didn't expect him to age that much since then.
I then posted this on Facebook.
I was reluctant to post this because much of this is still a mystery, but the person in the picture is supposedly 41 (I'm only a few months from that age) but looks much older, but that's not my main concern. It's that his name (Elia Laeli) is a familiar name from middle school (Kawananakoa), and I'm not even sure if that's the same guy, because even though I didn't really know him that well, I didn't think he would be the type to do what he's accused of before being shot by HPD! I hate to be rumor-mongering when an investigation has barely started, but it's a real tragedy, even if it's a different guy with the same name.
2 other former classmates confirmed that it really was the same Elia Laeli that we knew from middle school and that they too were heartbroken over what became of him.
But since then, I heard nothing from other former middle school classmates. No memorials, no reminiscence, nothing! It's like he disappeared from everyone's minds.
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And he wasn't even the first person shot by Honolulu police that I knew this year.
As mentioned in a previous blog post, a former student of mine from my sub teaching days, Iremamber Sykap, was killed by Honolulu police after a high-speed chase after an armed robbery.
https://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2021/04/former-students-and-tragedy-on-kalakaua.html
That case got controversy in that it was seen as a sign of the police being racist towards Micronesians. There still hasn't been evidence released that the police officers involved in that case have any racial bias, but there have been other reports of police racially profiling Micronesians. Also, social media reports of incidents involving Micronesian suspects attract way more racist comments than reports of incidents involving Asian, Polynesian, or European suspects. In fact, one of Sykap's associates in the incident, Kealii Fernandez, isn't even Micronesian, but there were nowhere near as many racial comments about Fernandez as there were about Sykap.
None of the race controversies appeared in the Elia Laeli case, most likely because he was Samoan, and there's a lot of Polynesians in Hawaii's police force, whereas there's not many Micronesians in the local police.
Police shooting a suspect of the same race just isn't going to generate many headlines.
Because of the race controversy in the Sykap case, there have been articles about his upbringing and what went wrong in his life to lead up to his death.
But for Elia Laeli, no follow-up investigations from the local media. Nothing about how his life went in a downward spiral.
I understand his family would want privacy as they must be very heartbroken in how life has ended.
However, in a case where police killed someone, taxpayers who pay the police salary would like to know the circumstances.
I also think the public would benefit from knowing how Elia Laeli's life went in that tragic direction so that we can learn the warning signs, in case someone else is headed in the same direction.
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While many people claim that social media can cause psychological problems, I do think that a lack of social media presence could mean that a person has something to hide. As I mentioned earlier, Elia Laeli had no social media presence. The same is true for other former classmates who I suspect to be involved in gangs or drugs.
This is not to say that only criminals avoid social media.
But social media is a great way to reach out to others if you are dealing with problems.
I've seen multiple times when people I know on social media express their pain, and long-lost classmates write in response that they can be someone they can talk to.
I do feel that writing my blog and posting on social media has helped others understand me more. It sure helped me understand my friends, classmates, co-workers more.
This is not to say that social media is a substitute for mental health assistance from a trained professional.
But maybe if he had an audience online, somebody could've figured out how to help him navigate the stresses of life. Somebody could've directed him to resources to help him with whatever is troubling him.
Sadly, it's all too late now.
