Kamehameha Schools-Hawaii went briefly into a “soft lockdown” Thursday morning as police officers arrested a 52-year-old man walking along Highway 11 in Keaau with a handgun.
At 9:06 a.m., Puna patrol officers received a report of a man walking along the highway near the school holding what appeared to be a handgun.
Police notified school officials about the incident as they responded to the scene.
Officers arriving on scene at 9:09 a.m. arrested Hermundo Tagalicud of Kurtistown on suspicion of firearm offenses.
For nine minutes, the school went into what it called a “soft lockdown” until officers were able to safely take Tagalicud into custody.
Kamehameha Schools officials sent an internal email Thursday to notify its campus community about the measures that were taken.
“We immediately moved to secure our campus and initiate our protocols including the locking of our gate and increased security perimeter monitoring,” the email said. “Thankfully, the suspect was apprehended quickly before any additional measures to lockdown our campus were required.
“In these situations where there is an incident off-campus, as soon as we are notified, we determine which of our safety protocols are most appropriate; in this case, we move to a ‘soft lockdown’ of campus, which prevented anyone from entering our main gate and heightened monitoring from our security and campus administrators based on the level of threat.
“Should a lockdown (have) been necessary, additional notifications would have been sent over various emergency broadcast channels to campus staff and our emergency ‘ohana contacts.”
At the time of his arrest Thursday, Tagalicud was free on supervised release — a form of cashless bail — stemming from a 2021 charge of unauthorized control of a stolen vehicle.
The charge is a Class C felony, and standard terms for conditional pretrial release on felony charges include to not own or possess any firearms or ammunition.
Tagalicud on Thursday was charged on a bench warrant issued by Hilo Circuit Judge Peter Kubota to revoke the supervised release, and the judge set a bail amount of $2,000. Tagalicud is undergoing a court-ordered mental exam in the stolen vehicle case.
Tagalicud also previously was involved in an arson incident.
In that 2017 case, he was granted a deferred acceptance of his guilty plea to a charge of second-degree arson — which means the conviction for the Class B felony was expunged from his criminal record after he successfully completed four years probation.
Tagalicud remains in the Hilo Police Station cellblock while East Hawaii Criminal Investigation Section detectives continue to investigate potential firearms charges.
Anyone with information on this case is asked to contact Detective Christopher Jelsma at (808) 961-2255 or Christopher.Jelsma@hawaiicounty.gov.
Those who prefer anonymity may call Crime Stoppers at (808) 961-8300.
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.