A reporter-disclosure chronology and public accountability letter by Ekewaka Lono.
The state file began with a tax-office encounter. My history did not.
Before that encounter, I had left Portlock after a private-information episode that disturbed me, rented a back unit in Haleʻiwa, received a room inquiry, and heard a private business message echoed at Coffee Gallery shortly before a housing reference called. During the wider period that followed, I reported a death threat, an invasive-investigation threat, and a career-destruction warning.
This is my account of that history and of the institutional decisions that followed it. My argument is that the state-facing story displaced the housing, pressure, and safety history needed to understand what I was reporting. I am identifying that omission, not asking readers to treat every name in the chronology as evidence of a common plan.
Portlock: A Private Detail Spoken Back to Me
In late 2014 or early 2015, I was living in the Portlock/Hawaiʻi Kai area. I met Erin Kaʻahea Gross through a hiking group.
I recall Gross discussing access to an Oʻahu “celebrity” tracking or stalker service and encouraging me to use 23andMe. In a later call, she described a “dream” involving pancakes and gelato—foods I had recently eaten. I place the pancakes inside Outrigger Canoe Club and the gelato at Il Gelato in Kahala.
The private-club detail mattered to me. This was not simply someone observing me at an open sidewalk table. I experienced the call as a demonstration of access to information about my movements. I left the area and moved to Haleʻiwa within weeks.
The conversation and move are my reports. My conclusion that the call signaled access to private information is my interpretation. I am not claiming to have identified a surveillance system or authenticated a technical interception. Messages, call records, payment records, and people I told at the time are the evidence paths for the event.
Haleʻiwa: Housing and the Reference Path
By August 2015, I was renting the back unit of a Haleʻiwa duplex. Gene and Rita Hartmann occupied the front unit, according to my account. My account includes a property and family connection that also appeared in the room application’s references.
That shared environment matters because it placed the people in this history close enough to observe routines, arrivals, and housing changes. The residential street address is omitted. Lease, occupancy, and county property records can establish the relevant arrangement without publishing a private residential locator.
A prospective tenant contacted me about a room. I report that the application material listed a person connected to the property and a manager in the surfing community as references. Her role here is the room inquiry and application. I do not accuse her of misconduct. Her name and the property reference’s name are withheld; the application and reference contacts remain the records to examine.
An application is a concrete source: what was submitted, when it arrived, which names and contact fields it contained, and who contacted whom. Listing a reference does not establish that the applicant or the reference knew of any later threat or intended harm.
The same rule applies to public figures and relatives appearing around this history. Marriage, mentorship, family, housing, or geographic proximity does not make a person responsible for someone else’s conduct. The account assigns conduct to speakers and participants, not to everyone connected to them.
August 2015: Purple Audio, Coffee Gallery, and a Call
Around August 10, 2015, I sent a private Facebook message to Andrew Roberts of Purple Audio about pro-audio equipment or reconnecting with the company. That inquiry was separate from the room application.
I then went to Coffee Gallery in Haleʻiwa. I recall a man at a nearby table, with a biker couple, saying words to the effect of:
“So you’re trying to reconnect with Purple? Spencer will call you shortly.”
About half an hour later, Spencer Klein called concerning the room inquiry.
This is the sequence I report: private business message, public echo, housing-reference call.
My inference is that the timing functioned as an intimidation signal. The comment did more than name a business. It joined a niche private inquiry to an imminent reference call in the local housing environment. I experienced it as a message that my private activity was visible to people around me.
The account does not identify the transmission mechanism. Social relay and technical interception are different claims. My interpretation of the signal does not establish either. The Facebook message and call records can anchor the timing; my recollection of the café words and any contemporaneous witnesses or notes supply the oral part.
That distinction preserves the substance of the report without substituting a theory for a missing record.
The Tax-Office Encounter
The tax-office encounter occurred in November 2015. My account is that Young Kwak made a coercive payment demand inside a small booth, used an inflated amount, and threatened that leaving would mean dealing with someone who “wasn’t nice.” I arrived frightened and sleep-deprived after the preceding private-pressure sequence.
The exchange became the basis of the later state matter. I deny the threat Kwak attributed to me. I say the statement he recast was about exposing what was happening and telling everyone.
This letter does not claim that Gross, the prospective tenant, the references, the Hartmanns, or other Haleʻiwa actors planned, caused, or orchestrated the tax-office encounter. My argument is about what the official account left outside its frame: the history I brought into the building and the complaints I was trying to make.
The private chronology and the state encounter have distinct origins. Their later relationship is the subject of my accountability argument, not proof of advance coordination.
November 2015: Yuen and the “Colonoscopy” Threat
After the tax-office encounter, I met in person with James Yuen and a man identified to me as a New Jersey State Police organized-crime-task-force investigator. My current recollection places that meeting in November 2015, before the later grand-jury accusation.
The New Jersey investigator knew of my childhood associates and referred to their organized-crime associations during the attempted interrogation. He told me he was going to give me a “colonoscopy.”
I understood the statement as a threat of invasive investigation and humiliation. The investigator encounter was another point at which a complaint about what had happened to me became an occasion to invoke my background against me.
Those words and the encounter are my firsthand report. The investigator’s identity and assignment, Yuen’s records, interview notes or recording, and interagency communications are the evidence needed to establish the official side of the event.
I include it here as the continuation of the chronology after the tax office. It is not being moved backward into the housing sequence, and it does not establish who transmitted the earlier private message.
Kwak’s Account Became the State’s Account
Kwak told the grand jury I threatened him after the Yuen/New Jersey investigator meeting in November 2015. That statement is false. I heard the accusation in the grand-jury recording: he reported that I threatened him. I absolutely did not. I was present for the underlying exchange, not in the grand-jury room. The recording is my source for what he said there; it has not been independently authenticated or published with this letter.
I strongly suspect Kwak knew the account was false. I also suspect Yuen and the New Jersey investigator influenced it. Those are my inferences, not conversations or instructions I independently witnessed. Witness-preparation and interview records, communications, and the testimony can test them.
This is the transition I am criticizing: private pressure and a disputed official encounter were followed by an institutional accusation that became the dominant frame for judging me. The agency record had authority and a procedural path. My account of the preceding events did not have the same institutional visibility.
The fuller account of the investigator encounter, the grand-jury allegation, and the later closing argument appears in The Hypothetical Gun.
The Hartmann Threat and the Counsel Report
After February 2016 and before the July 2017 trial, Gene and Rita Hartmann delivered the conditional threat I report as:
“Stay away from [name withheld].”
“Or you will get whacked.”
The name in the quotation is withheld. I understood it to refer to a public figure. The allegation concerns the reported speakers and does not establish that person’s knowledge, participation, or direction.
I recall Gene reframing the subject the following day as a “murder mystery.” I told him I would tell everyone. I then attempted to report the threat and its context to Audrey L.E. Stanley, my assigned counsel. I recall her interruption and dismissive response, in substance, “no big deal.”
Within a relatively short period, she communicated that there might be a way to resolve the matter if I left Hawaiʻi. She presented it as tentative and not her own idea. I received no written terms.
My inference is that these communications converged on removing me from the local environment while the threat itself remained unexplained to me as an institutional safety issue. I do not claim to have witnessed an agreement between counsel and the private speakers. The record questions and my criticism of the representation are set out in The Threat Report.
May or June 2017: The Career Warning
Shortly before trial, a man I understood at the time to be an associate of the public figure named in the earlier threat and identify as “Kevin” in my source account approached me outside Kahala Whole Foods. I report that he threatened career destruction if I continued talking about the Hartmann threat and related conduct. I was then living under severe pressure and had become homeless.
He invoked a prominent technology investor’s name. That is reported name-dropping by the speaker, not evidence that the investor participated or that the speaker had the authority he projected.
My interpretation is that this was pressure against disclosure at the point when the history could matter in a courtroom. The statement was conditional: keep talking, lose the career. The warning belongs in the history even though a surviving recording or business video has not been produced with this letter.
The earlier application does not become wrongful because I later received threats. The later threats do explain why the earlier timing and reference records matter to my account.
July 2017 and What Remained Afterward
This publication concerns accountability for conduct and record-making.
In that trial, I watched Kanemoto use the mock-pistol gesture and hypothetical-gun argument described in The Hypothetical Gun. My inference is that it exploited the dangerous-associate narrative introduced during the investigator encounter. The gesture, the investigator’s words, and the inference connecting them are distinct parts of my account.
I also report later Coffee Gallery episodes that continued to make the reference path significant to me. In fall 2017, I heard a woman say she had spoken to “Spencer,” followed by “who?” In early 2018, after I had sent a private iMessage referring to “Henry,” I heard a woman nearby say, “Ok he’s listening now. Henry.” I interpreted those remarks as further signals of access to private activity. The comments are my reports; interception is my inference, not a technical finding.
I report no known contemporaneous media coverage of the wider 2015–2017 history. Non-coverage neither proves the events nor proves a newsroom motive. Its relevance is that no public account brought the housing, reported pressure, counsel handling, and state narrative together for scrutiny.
Years Later: Trying to Put the Threat Into a Police Record
Years after the original threat and the July 2017 prosecution, I again attempted to report the Hartmann threat to HPD. I identify Officer Brandt as the officer who prevented another officer from receiving that report. This occurred after 2022 and is separate from my September 20, 2022 interaction with Brandt at Breakers / North Shore Marketplace.
This is my firsthand account of a later reporting attempt, not a finding from an authenticated police file. It matters because my effort to put the earlier threat into an institutional record encountered another barrier years after the prosecution ended.
The records to retrieve are CAD and dispatch entries, responding-officer and unit assignments, report-intake and incident records, officer notes, any retained body-camera footage, supervisor records, and any complaint or internal-affairs material. Those records should establish what was reported, who was present, what Brandt did, and whether an intake record was created. I am not identifying the second officer or assigning an exact date beyond after 2022.
The Public Frame Outlasted the Matter
My argument is that a state file can become the frame through which institutions see a person while the person’s unlogged safety history remains outside it. The existence of a state file does not explain what investigators said, what a witness testified to, what counsel did with a threat report, or what a prosecutor showed jurors.
That is the omission I am challenging. The earlier history is not an excuse to assign guilt across a social map. It is part of my account of the events, the responses I received, and the decisions for which I seek an explanation.
Sources, Evidence, and Response
This chronology draws on my firsthand account and the records and source materials identified below.
| Evidence class | Material |
|---|---|
| My firsthand reports | Gross conversation; Coffee Gallery remarks and call; tax-office exchange; investigator’s words; Hartmann threat; counsel conversations; career warning; courtroom observation; post-2022 HPD reporting attempt |
| Records to obtain or authenticate | Lease and application; property and occupancy material; message exports and call logs; agency interview and assignment records; grand-jury testimony; counsel correspondence; trial records; HPD dispatch/CAD, assignment, intake, officer-note, retained footage, supervisor, and complaint records |
| My allegations requiring those records | Kwak’s reported false statement; my inference about his knowledge and possible investigator influence; institutional handling of the threat and departure concept; Brandt’s interference with the later police-reporting attempt |
| My identified inferences | Intimidating effect of the café sequence; invasive purpose of the investigator’s phrase; convergence toward departure; organized-crime framing carried into the mock-pistol argument |
The original application, agency files, and grand-jury transcript have not been independently authenticated and published with this letter. No independent authentication is implied by listing their retrieval paths.
The Kanemoto and Stanley drafts have not been submitted to ODC, and no disciplinary findings are reported. These public accountability letters supersede those drafts as my published account. This Reporter Disclosure is chronology and source context; it does not prove the separate Wilson Loo/Petricevic courtroom allegations.
Any named person or institution may respond through the site’s Corrections Policy. No response obtained specifically for this letter is represented here. Documents or responses that establish a different event, date, or communication should be included with their source identified.
The public record needs the preface and the continuation: the move, the application, the private message, the café statement, the investigator encounter, the reported threats, the counsel response, the courtroom conduct, and the later attempt to put the threat into a police record. My side of that history belongs in the account.
The header image is an editorial illustration of a generic residence and record trail. It depicts no actual property, application, reported event, or named person. Image credit: generated editorial artwork for Oahu Underground / GTCode, October 1, 2026.