Before the manhunt for a Pahoa man suspected of killing three elderly men in Kapoho and Kalapana earlier this week ended on Thursday afternoon, Puna residents reacted to the grisly homicides with a mixture of fear, sorrow and frustration.

Read more Visitor accused of hurling rock at monk seal pleads not guilty

Before the manhunt for a Pahoa man suspected of killing three elderly men in Kapoho and Kalapana earlier this week ended on Thursday afternoon, Puna residents reacted to the grisly homicides with a mixture of fear, sorrow and frustration.

Police reported at 2:45 p.m Thursday they had arrested Jacob “Jake” Daniel Baker, 36, “without incident” for allegedly committing the crimes.

Baker is suspected of killing Robert Shine, 69, and Chitta Morse, 79, in the Papaya Farms Road area of Kapoho over the course of Monday and Tuesday.

Shine’s body was discovered floating in a rain catchment tank by police and concerned neighbors on Monday night around 8 p.m. at a residence along Railroad Avenue, police said.

According to residents interviewed by the Tribune-Herald, Morse’s mutilated body was found Tuesday morning at a residence by one of his employees, with police arriving just after noon. According to police, the victim exhibited “clear, suspicious injuries” from “blunt force trauma.”

The third victim, John Carse, 69, of Pahoa was found late Tuesday evening by police officers conducting a welfare check at a residence along Kalapana-Kapoho Road near the Kalapana Transfer Station.

Baker allegedly killed Carse after stealing a vehicle and driving 19 miles to Kalapana. An autopsy determined Carse died as a result of “sharp-force trauma.”

Police said Wednesday they were not aware of a motive for the crimes, and the only connection between the victims was that the first two lived near one another and were found about 500 feet apart.

The killings have rattled Puna. Prior to the news breaking Thursday afternoon that Baker had been caught, some of his former acquaintances had gone to extreme lengths to protect themselves, fearing he might return.

Ann Kobsa, 64, is a biologist and community activist with the Pahoa-based environmental nonprofit Malama O Puna, and let Baker stay on her property along Papaya Farms Road for three months several years ago.

Kobsa said Baker was a hard worker while staying on the land, helping her hunt pigs and harvest fruit. She claimed Baker had a daughter with a girlfriend while living in the community, but roughly two years ago his partner returned to the mainland with the little girl — who would be around 3 years old now.

Rumors have swirled about Baker’s drug use, with some Kapoho residents claiming he was high on methamphetamine when he allegedly committed the homicides. Kobsa said she never saw him do hard drugs, but recalled when he lived on her land that he sometimes acted strangely.

“I didn’t know of him doing anything but a lot of pot — like, a lot of pot,” she said. “And I attributed a lot of his weird behaviors to being really stoned and kind of spacey. Burning things — I’d be talking to him, and the things are boiling over on the stove and burning. He was just, you know, scattered.”

Kobsa implied that having his girlfriend and daughter leave him could have been a factor in him finally snapping and going on a violent spree.

“He had a psychotic break somehow,” she said. “I don’t know if it was drug-induced, or if it was just being left by his family and feeling unloved.”

Read more New cellphone limits coming for Hawaii students

Kobsa said she had taken steps to arm herself while doing chores around the farm Thursday.

“I’m carrying my gun around,” she said. “I went up on the roof to do some work up there for an hour or two, and I thought, what if he shows up while (I’m) up there? Then (I’m) trapped. I took the gun up there. That’s not so unreasonable, is it?”

Railroad Avenue resident Kevin Fray said in an email to the Tribune-Herald on Thursday that he lives a quarter-mile away from where Shine’s body was found, and that he was frustrated with what he characterized as inaction by law enforcement.

On Tuesday afternoon while police were at Morse’s property evaluating the scene, Fray said he spoke with officers for “several hours” and attempted to provide them with evidence of Baker’s whereabouts in Kalapana.

“I lost my temper with the police at Chitta’s,” he said. “(I was) explaining all the evidence to them on Tuesday afternoon and yet hearing that they were not going to send any cops to Kalapana to look for him while they had 15-plus agents there looking at Chitta’s body.”

Fray said it was likely that had police acted immediately on the information he was providing, they would have been able to arrest Baker on Tuesday afternoon and “prevent the third … death.”

“The exact moment I was telling my frustration to the cop was literally the exact time people were seeing him in plain sight in a main intersection of Kalapana walking on foot,” he said.

Ryan Collins, 31, works as a bartender in Pahoa, and told the Tribune-Herald on Thursday that the tragedies in Kapoho and Kalapana have made residents question the safety that typically comes with Puna’s rural, laid-back atmosphere.

“I think this is a horrible, tragic thing, but one thing that I hope comes from it is people maybe understanding that this is just any other place to live,” Collins said. “It could be Chicago, it could be L.A., it could be Seattle, it could be Honolulu, you know what I mean? These things happen in places, and I think people live here with a very high delusionment — because of the rainbows and the sunshine and the fresh air and the beaches and this and that — that like bad things just don’t happen here. You hear it all the time: ‘Oh, we live in paradise.’”

When asked what locals could do to prevent tragedies like this in the future, he said it comes down to strength in numbers.

“It’s time for the community to get together and for us to do mob mentality,” he said. “When (stuff) like this happens, you know, or you see (stuff) happening, get four or five people, and just stand behind a brother or sister as they need to say something to someone. You know what I mean? That’s all that needs to happen most of the time. I’ve seen it happen … you don’t even have to say anything, you’ve just gotta stand behind the person and be an energetic presence for what’s going on.”

Collins was on his way to work Thursday, and said he was nervous about leaving his wife at home alone with an alleged killer still on the loose at the time.

“Right now, my wife is house-sitting, and I’m gonna be at work,” he said. “We have two dogs, a bunch of cats at home … it’s just one of those things where it gets you nervous about leaving your house because you’re just like what the f*** is happening?”

A middle-aged Kapoho man was visiting Kobsa at her property Thursday morning and spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying that the facade of peace and serenity in the neighborhood had been shattered.

“To me, it’s just like as a community, we are freaking out because the big bad world has beaten down our door and is inside our house now,” he said. “We have been sheltered. You know, s*** hits the fan here and there, but it’s just the outside world is where all of this happens. We’ve been kind of like a little bubble. There’s always drama and politics in communities … but this is our first. It’s home now, it’s inside our house.

Read more Dodgers’ revamped batting order pummels Rockies 15-6

“The monsters are now living with us.”

Email Stefan Verbano at [email protected].