Suspect in 3 Puna killings captured after massive Big Island search

The arrest of the suspect in the Puna killings brought an abrupt end to a manhunt that had left rural neighborhoods on edge and forced police to search across the entire Big Island. For residents of Pāhoa, Papaya Farms Road and the surrounding stretches of lower Puna, the capture marked the first real relief after days of fear and uncertainty over whether the suspect could still be moving through the district.

Hawaii Island police had tied 36-year-old Jacob “Jake” Baker to the deaths of three elderly men found over two days in separate homes in the Puna District. The first victim, a 69-year-old man, was discovered at 7:59 p.m. Monday off Railroad Avenue in a home where he was partially submerged in a cement pond. The second, a 79-year-old man, was found at about 12:39 p.m. Tuesday, roughly 400 to 500 yards away near Papaya Farms Road in Pāhoa, with apparent blunt force trauma. Later that night, at 9:58 p.m., officers found a third 69-year-old man dead in a residence on the 12-7800 block of Kalapana Kapoho Beach Road, about 19 miles away.

Police initially said they could not immediately tell whether the first death was suspicious, but an autopsy later led investigators to treat it as a homicide. The second death was identified early as a homicide because of the injuries found at the scene, while an autopsy was ordered for the third victim to determine the exact cause of death. A friend, Don Hyatt, identified the first two men as Bob Shine, 69, and Chitta Morse, 79.

The search for Baker stretched beyond the immediate crime scenes and across the island, a sign of how quickly the case spread fear through a rural area where response times can be long and residents often rely on one another before law enforcement arrives. Assistant Chief Rio Amon-Wilkins said at the height of the hunt that the department had to assume Baker could be anywhere on the island. With Baker now captured, the immediate threat has lifted, but the killings have left Puna with hard questions about how three men were killed in separate homes and how the violence moved so fast through the district.