Armed Hawaii suspect in three killings arrested after island manhunt

A shirtless, shoeless man and a dog on a dirt driveway set off the final break in a search that had left Hawaii Island’s rural Puna District tense for days. The man seen on a security camera Thursday afternoon, May 28, prompted the property owner to call 911 immediately, after police had warned that Jacob Baker, 36, of Pāhoa, was armed and extremely dangerous and wanted in the killings of three men over less than 48 hours.

By the time the video surfaced, residents in the remote district were already bracing for another attack. Baker was accused in the deaths of Robert Shine, 69; Chitta Morse, 79; and John Carse, 69, in a part of the island where homes are separated by long roads, tropical vegetation and barren lava fields. Hawaii Island spans more than 4,000 square miles, and neighbors said the scale of the search made the danger feel immediate and unpredictable. Some residents said they feared Baker might show up at their house with a machete.

Police later said Baker was found hiding in a small cave on a neighboring property and was arrested without incident after a large search that drew significant resources and help from state and federal authorities. He remained jailed on suspicion of murder, burglary and other charges. Authorities said they had not identified a motive and had found no known connection among the three victims other than that two lived near each other.

The killings added to a sense of alarm that had already taken root days earlier. Two women had sought temporary restraining orders against Baker, saying he threatened and harassed them at a farm, but a judge denied both requests for lack of evidence. That left residents in Puna with few answers and little reassurance as reports of warnings, sightings and an expanding police response spread across the community.

When officers finally took Baker into custody, the mood shifted from fear to relief, but not to calm. People in the Puna District were left grieving three deaths, angry at how quickly the violence unfolded and uneasy about how close the suspect had come to slipping back into the rural landscape that surrounds Pāhoa, Kalapana, Leilani Estates and the rest of the island’s far eastern edge.