Victim warns of assault on Pukalani trail

WAILUKU - A Pukalani woman said she wanted to warn others after she was assaulted by a teenager Monday night on a path between the Pukalani soccer field and the lower Pukalani neighborhood.

"I just don't want another woman to go through this," said the 36-year-old, who suffered two cracked ribs, as well as cuts on her chest, face, neck and arm. "I just want women to be careful."

The woman said she was assaulted between 9:30 and 10 p.m. after she had walked across the soccer field below the Mayor Hannibal Tavares Community Center and went onto an old path that is known as a shortcut into the neighborhood along Old Haleakala Highway.

Eight- to 10-foot-high cinder block walls run along the unlighted path, which is known to some as "graffiti path."

The woman said she was about a block away from her house on Alohi Street when she turned a corner and saw three teenage boys drinking beer. Two were standing and one was sitting on the ground.

After at first inviting her to join them, one youth got up and confronted her, using his keychain to slash her chest, she said. He also scratched her with his fingernails, she said. "When I finally tried to fight him off, he pushed me up against the wall," she said.

She said the other two boys didn't touch her but knew what was happening.

When a neighborhood resident heard the commotion and yelled that she was going to call the police, the boys stopped and the woman said she ran home and called police.

She described the youth who assaulted her as 5-foot-9 to 6-foot-1, of medium build, with long ehu-colored hair and medium brown skin.

While continuing to investigate the woman's report, police said they hadn't had reports of similar incidents in the area.