Everything A Cop Should Be

Once chased around an enclosed lot by Tyke the rampaging elephant, HPD officer Zane Hamrick wins a national award for exceptional bravery

Wednesday - June 13, 2007
By Alice Keesing
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Officer Gay Minton and Hamrick
discuss a burglary

the city streets.

Hamrick and a trainer set off after Tyke, catching up with her when she went into an old fenced-off lot. People following behind shut the gate on the lot in an attempt to keep the elephant in. But Hamrick and the trainer were trapped inside with the enraged animal. He remembers watching Tyke as she head-butted a VW van. He remembers driving around and around the lot as she chased his police car.

“I remember thinking, ‘This is not good,’” he says drily.

Hamrick was eventually able to get free of the lot. What happened to Tyke is sad history.

“An elephant rampaging through a city is scary,” Hamrick says. “It was tragic.”

Hamrick’s latest adventure - the one that is bringing him all the awards - happened on Oct. 15, the day of the big earthquake. It was around 7:30 p.m. It was dark and it had been a long day with power out all over the island. Hamrick was leaving Lanikai and had just driven over the bridge near Buzz’s when he saw water bubbling up through the asphalt on the road. He called in the broken water main, set up barricades around the area then started directing traffic with Officer Justin Winter, who’d arrived on the scene.

About 10 minutes later Shannon Sloan drove down Makalii Street and tried to get around the barricade. When her tire got caught on the road, she got out to take a look. Busy directing traffic just up the road, Hamrick yelled out to her to move.

Officer Zane Hamrick responds to HPD
dispatch

“Next thing I looked back and I saw her fall,” Hamrick says. “Then I couldn’t see her, so I started sprinting over. I saw this big hole that had opened up and I saw her head. She was in this big mass of gurgling brown water ... I just dove in. I knew she was in trouble and I knew I had to get her out.”

Jumping into a sinkhole of churning water could be risky at any time, but it was even riskier for Hamrick, who was wearing a 15-pound gun belt, heavy boots and bullet-proof vest.

“The pressure of that water could easily have pushed him and the girl under a portion of the road and trapped them there,” Eber says. “Fortunately all they got was a couple of scratches. And then, after he saved the girl, obviously he was dripping wet, but he went back and continued directing traffic until we could send another officer to relieve him to go and get changed.”

Hamrick is honored by all the awards that have been coming his way. But he would prefer to shine a light on the deeds of his fellow officers who put themselves on the line every day. He says he has a new lifelong friend in Sloan. But there’s the sense that he’d rather not talk about the incident much any more.

Still, it does seem to keep coming back to haunt him. In a weird case of déjà vu, Hamrick was driving along the same stretch of road in April when he came across another water main break and another sinkhole. As he was directing traffic, a woman trying to cross the road headed straight for the sinkhole. Calling out to her to stop, Hamrick looked over at his sergeant who was there with him.

“If she falls in,” he called out, “you go this time.”

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