How is this man not arrested already?

Long story, so bare with me.

As some of you may remember, I went on vacation to Hawaii with my g/f last week. It was a great time, had a lot of fun. There was one hiccup, on our second day our car was robbed while we were at a beach.

We had gone on a morning hike to maunawili falls (which I highly recommend if you ever go… just don’t kill yourself), and taken a ton of pictures using our hosts (my g/f’s close friend and her husband) gopro waterproof camera. We had planned to spend a whole afternoon at nearby Kailua beach, but unfortunately our hike took a while so we swung by the beach for like 20–30 minutes, just so we could see it (and it is definitely beautiful). In an incredibly stupid move, we left the window cracked, and out two back packs in the back of the SUV (an older GMC jimmy).. thinking to ourselves “oh we’ll only be here for like 20 minutes..”

Well low and behold when we returned to the car, the back packs were gone from the back. Inside them were my g/f’s wallet, including $300 cash, id, credit cards, her medication, several random articles of clothing, a water bottle, and in our friends back pack (a camelback, military issued I believe) their waterproof gopro camera. Basically at this point we’re all pissed and think we’re screwed. A friend of our hosts who had gone along remembered there being a red van in the lot (the lot being slightly back from the beach and largely un-used), sitting with it’s door slightly cracked… which was now gone. So we call the police and while we’re waiting we scour the area hoping to find either thieves on foot or some of our stuff thrown out by the side of the road…

While waiting for the police, the red van in question from earlier returns, and parks in the same place.. proceeding to again crack his door and sit there. We go and ask the sole occupant (an overweight man of Hawain descent) if he saw anything (all of us extremely suspicious of him). He says that he didn’t see anything, and says stuff to the effect of “oh man that sucks, yah a lot of robbery around here lately.” Well the police arrive and take our report, and interview the guy in the red van. The officer says she’s familiar with the man and suspects he knows something, but after interviewing him she is less certain. Basically we are sent on our way fully realizing our stuff is probably gone for good.

Well the next morning we receive a call from the janitor at the Kailua post office. She says “you left your stuff in our drop box..” (like yah lady, THAT’S where we put our stuff!)...We don’t know what all is there, but included is my g/f’s cell phone (a cheap flip phone), her ids and credit cards, etc… They’re closed since it’s Sunday, but we can come by and get it Monday. So we go the next day and what was left was my g/f’s makeup bag (which was in her back pack). Inside we find her wallet, missing all $300 of course, ids, canceled credit cards, her medication.. and much to everyone’s surprise.. the $300 waterproof gopro camera. We have the police come out and we update the report, and we ask if they could check the post office security cameras. But they basically shrug off the idea (much to our dismay). Anyways we go about our day, Pearl Harbor that day.

When we got home the girls go and look at the pictures of our hike on the stolen-now-returned camera.. happy that at least they get to see that. Well much to their surprise there are two new videos on the camera.. with captions of a steering wheel for the icon. They click them to find our thief inspecting the camera… on video, in his vehicle. He even looks directly at the camera. It was, go figure, the guy in the red van. We all recognize him immediately. We quickly make a bunch of copies of the video, and then take one to the Kailua police department and give it to the officer who originally took our report. She puts it into evidence and assures us she’s going to show it to the detectives in charge of the investigation when they arrive the next morning. Everyone gets a good laugh about how stupid this guy must be.

Well several days pass and we hear nothing. My g/f and I arrived back home on Thursday, and still nothing. On Saturday, friends of our friends were at Kailua and saw the same red van, in the same parking lot. So naturally they call our friends out, and the police.. and the police show up and search the van.. sadly not finding any of our things… But this gets to the actual question you’ve been reading to find. The police didn’t arrest the man. They didn’t even question him… saying something about not questioning the man because it’s an ongoing investigation….. How on Earth is this an ongoing investigation? You have him on film, in his vehicle, with stolen goods in site in the vehicle on film… the film btw taken from a stolen camera…. How the hell is this guy not arrested on the spot????