Below is an email from Joni Kamiya, Asa Yamashita's cousin.
Dear Representatives,
I am writing to you in regards to the recent murder of my cousin, Asa Yamashita. She was a wife, mother, sister, daughter, and loved one to our family and her death was a senseless act of violence. I feel that she is yet another headline in the news of senseless violence that plagues Hawaii because of a failure in the systems we have in place that is supposed to keep its citizens safe.
I a hoping that through this incident with its subsequent investigation, something will change so that no other family and community has to experience a loss such as this. There has been too many stories like this in the news lately. The Koko Head crater attacks, the Adam Mau-Goffredo murders, the death of Cyrus Belt under the hands of Matthew Higa, the Sanchez-Brown murder, Karen Ertell murder, as well as Janel Tupuola, are all deaths that should not have happened but did because of a system failure.
When laws are passed to establish punishment, it needs to be carried out accordingly. When a criminal is given a life sentence, it should mean never leaving prison, ever. The parole board should not be granting parole to someone with a life sentence. Judges who let people off lightly should also be held accountable for these criminals also. We should not be letting out a multiple offender out of jail at all. How many times does someone need to commit a crime before they really stay in jail? Do we know where these criminals go after they are released and is the community alerted? I realized that they have protections but we as law abiding citizens should have the right to know also. These people are dangerous to society but are let out only to commit more crimes against more innocent victims causing more pain and suffering to families.
We have also seen a breakdown in the mental health system here also. Too many times, these criminals are known to be at risk to others and themselves yet they are still allowed to roam freely among the public. Matthew Higa was known to be mentally ill yet there was no supervision of his psychiatric status while out in the community. It is well known that a lot of mentally ill patients are not compliant with medications and will become psychotic without it. It becomes a revolving door of them getting treatment then going back out in the community then back again to the psych unit because of noncompliance. I would not be surprised if the alleged perpetrator in Asa's death had some issue with mental illness at some point in his life and was in state care. Also, families of these criminals know that this person may be a danger to others yet where is the support for them to get help? The people closest to these criminals have no where to turn when it comes to getting treatment and maintenance of their loved one with mental illness and neither does the community.
I also would not be surprised that Asa's killer may have been on drugs too. We can't blame drugs for his actions completely. Someone somewhere knew that he may have had issues with it, and likely had no where to turn to get him help or didn't even bother to address it.
The easy approach that could be taken from this whole incident is look at the fact that this perpetrator was able to buy and knife and use it and maybe we need to have permits to buy knives. Or in the other cases, we have to have more gun control, or enforce restraining orders, etc. There is a much bigger issue that I challenge all of you with as our lawmakers. The challenge is to not make more laws to try and prevent crimes but overhaul and rework our systems in place to avoid these kinds of tragedies from happening again. The system is disjointed and does not work!
When a deranged person gets a knife in his or her hand and takes a life away, our governmental and societal systems have failed each and everyone of us. We all have failed to save an innocent victim's life. So I am writing to you to help in retooling our systems so we don't have to see another headline in the news. Two young children, a husband, her father, and her sisters as well as the community all have lost their loved one. I urge you to look beyond making laws to stop this unnecessary loss from happening again and fix the systems that should have stopped this in the first place.
Sincerely,
Joni Kamiya
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