Officers praised for responses to incidents at two E. Hawaii schools

A high-ranking police official is crediting school resource officers for their quick actions that kept a pair of serious incidents this week at East Hawaii public schools from getting worse.

Assistant Chief Kenneth Quiocho said School Resource Officer Lisa Ebesugawa arranged for extra officers at Hilo High School on Tuesday morning to help quell an altercation that broke out during a break between classes at about 9:30 a.m.

“She already knew that something was going on, because she had been talking to school administrators,” Quiocho said. “She arranged to get community policing officers up there, and then they sent a couple of patrol officers up there to have a presence and deter anything from happening. They were there during several breaks and then, around 9:30 … it erupted into this big ruckus up there.”

In all, five students were suspended by the school, but no arrests were made. No students were injured.

School staff and police noted that the altercation was quickly turning physical, and took action to stop it from escalating, but during a potential brawl between two students, a police officer collided with a 51-year-old woman administrator who was knocked to the ground while trying to separate the two students. The involved students were suspended from school.

“The administrator is getting between the two boys to get them separated,” Quiocho said. “The police officer is running over to assist, and the one boy that is on the officer’s left, he shoulder-checks the administrator into the officer when the officer gets close enough to assist in keeping them separated. He then beelines it around the other administrator and goes toward the other student.

“Then, some other (school) staff members that were there helped the administrator get up off the ground.”

Quiocho said the administrator, who was treated and released to Hilo Medical Center, might have suffered an ankle injury but nothing serious.

Text added to some cellphone videos that said the administrator was in critical condition after the incident was false, Quiocho said. One of the videos can be seen here.

“It was disappointing to see the social media posts,” he said. “The posts take away from the seriousness of what is occurring in our schools, and it is hopeful that the public will look at the incident and not believe everything they see and read on social media without supporting facts.

“This incident was serious, and it was more alarming that this kind of altercation takes place in our schools.”

The skirmish was the second serious incident in as many days to take place at an East Hawaii school.

On Monday, a 12-year-old girl was found unresponsive at Pahoa High and Intermediate School. Police said they had information the girl had vaped before going unconscious.

Quiocho credited the quick response by School Resource Officer Joseph Picadura, who administered a dose of Narcan to the girl. The girl was still unconscious but breathing when taken by ambulance to Hilo Medical Center.

According to Quiocho, the girl received “a comprehensive drug screen.”

“We haven’t gotten back the results on it yet,” he said. “We don’t have any comprehensive evidence to show she was vaping, we were just basing it off the information that we had. There are two things that we are following up on, though, that she may have had some sort of chocolate chip cookie and a vape pipe.”

Neither a cookie nor a pipe were recovered, Quiocho said, but “we’re still looking at that.”

“Thank goodness we have SROs in those schools. They were imperative in keeping the kids safe,” Quiocho said. “The amount of responsibility that we’ve put on our teachers today, it’s just ridiculous. You used to go to school as a teacher to teach, to educate our students, to make them contributing members of the community.

“And apparently, now, they have to be UFC referees, and they have to counsel kids and do drug interdiction, too.”

Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com