An interracial couple, Lindani Myeni and his wife, Lindsay Myeni, moved from their home in South Africa to Hawaii seeking a safe environment to raise their family. Tragically, just three months later, Lindani was killed by a Hawaiian police officer. 

The couple relocated to Honolulu from Denver in January.

“We never thought anything like this would ever happen there,” Lindsay, who is white, told the Associated Press

According to the police department, a person called first responders after Lindani entered a house that wasn’t his, US News reported. Outside of the house, officials said he refused numerous commands and warnings to get on the ground and physically assaulted officers, leaving one with a concussion.

Lindsay believes that her husband mistook the home for a Hare Kristna temple next door after visiting several culturally significant places throughout the day. She added that her husband may have been seeking spiritual guidance when entering what he thought was a temple, according to ABC News.

As evidence, the police released two short videos that were captured from body cameras during the incident which took place at night. During the footage, three shots can be heard, and afterward, an officer yelled, “Police.”

At the time of his death, Lindani was wearing his umqhele, a traditional Zulu headband, his wife said. By taking his shoes off at the door, the acts were meant to display his respectful intentions, she continued.

Lindsay filed a wrongful death suit against Honolulu alleging police were “motivated by racial discrimination towards people of Mr. Myeni’s African descent.”

Unlike other instances where police shootings were followed by mass protests and attracted national attention, Lindani’s death at the hands of law enforcement has largely been under the radar.

“Whereas if it was someone who people knew for a long period of time who got shot or killed, I think there might be more outrage because they would have been neighbors, gone to the same church,” Daphne Barbee-Wooten, former president of the African American Lawyers Association of Hawaii, said.

“And I think a lot of African Americans who live here are outraged,” she argued. “But do they take to the street about it? Not really.”

Ethan Caldwell, who’s of Black and Asian descent and is also an assistant professor of ethnic studies at the University of Hawaii, offered several reasons why no mass protests were held in response to the tragedy.

“We may not necessarily feel the same level of racism, anti-Blackness, discrimination, prejudice here as we do on the continent, but that doesn’t mean we still don’t face micro-aggressions on a daily basis, more so for some people,” Caldwell said.

“I think some people might be more willing to deal with those because it doesn’t necessarily mean that their lives are at-risk,” he added.

Caldwell recalled business boarding up their establishments during a peaceful Black Lives Matter march last summer.

Susan Ballard, a retired police chief who is white, believes that the incident wasn’t driven by any racial biases but by Lindani’s erratic behavior. “This person seriously injured the officers and their lives were in jeopardy,” she said, according to WJTV.

Before his death, Lindsay remembered that her husband didn’t have any encounters with racism while a resident in Hawaii. 

“And people are warm and friendly and they’re outgoing,” she said. “And all the things he loved about South Africa, Hawaii has a lot of those.”