The unsolved death of a teenager in 1977 haunted students and staff at Honolulu's McKinley High School for nearly half a century
The unsolved death of a teenager in 1977 haunted students and staff at Honolulu's McKinley High School for nearly half a centuryThis photo provided by the Honolulu Police Department shows 16-year-old student Dawn Momohara who was discovered dead on the second floor of a building at McKinley High School on March 21, 1977, in Honolulu. Former Hawaii lawmaker Suzanne Chun Oakland remembers arriving at school one morning in 1977 to an eerie buzz.
“I was just really sad," Chun Oakland recalled earlier this week. "I think for our student body, of course there’s that concern that what if he’s still out there and he does it to somebody else.” Momohara's sister — one of his flute players — arrived at school that day not knowing her sister had been found dead, he recalled. The sister was called to the office and later walked into the band room, devastated.
Police released sketches of a person of interest and a possible vehicle described by witnesses as a 1974 or 1975 Pontiac Lemans. A witness reported seeing the car when he and his girlfriend drove through campus the night before Momohara died. The witness saw a man and the car on the grass near the school's English building, Thoemmes said.Police were unable to identify a suspect and the case grew cold, though grief lingered over the campus.
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