Posted on: Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Man shot on Tantalusmay have had deathwish, mom says

ByDavid WaiteAdvertiser Staff Writer

The mother of a man who was shot and criticallywounded by an FBI agent Sunday afternoon onTantalus Drive said yesterday that her son mayhave wanted law enforcement officers to shoothim so he could avoid killing himself.Ute Boegel said her son, Martin, 27, had talked toher several times about killing himself since hestopped taking medicine for anxiety anddepression in January."He told me that if he died, God and Jesus wouldbe at the gates of heaven to let him in," UteBoegel said. "I told him if he did that, therewould be a group of people to meet him at thegates, but it wouldn't be God and Jesus, butsome other people, and they wouldn't be takinghim to heaven."An off-duty FBI agent shot Martin about 1 p.m.after he reportedly walked aggressively towardthe agent and refused to drop the weapon he wascarrying.Investigators now say Martin had a nonlethal,"airsoft" replica gun, which shoots plastic BBsand not real bullets.Airsoft guns are often designed as identicalcopies of their lethal counterparts and look real— especially if a bright orange ring at the tip of the barrel is pulled off or painted over.Ute believes her son never owned a real gun. Shedid not see the airsoft gun, but described it as a"toy."

"My son always volunteered at church. He is avery loving person, not a violent person," Boegelsaid. "He is ill now, his brain is out of order.Some people need medication, and he is one of them."

'out of control'

Boegel said her son stopped taking the medicinein January because the insurance company,which she would not identify, would no longer pay the $90 monthly cost for the prescriptiondrugs.She didn't notice any changes at first, but thenMartin began to rapidly lose weight."He got very thin and, over the past month or two, his anxiety escalated," Ute said. "He seemedmore nervous and out of control, and he begantalking to himself."Martin had been out on $100 bail on charges of impersonating a police officer in the seconddegree, a misdemeanor, after he was arrested byUniversity of Hawai'i campus security officers onMay 4.UH officials issued a campuswide security alertafter Martin allegedly posed as a police officer on

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campus May 1 and May 2.The man wanted by UH officials carried fakeidentification, wore a jacket with the word"police" on it and claimed to be a Honolulu policeofficer at UH's Maile Way entrance gate, UHspokesman Gregg Takayama said.Martin told his mother that he bought a blue jacket with the word "police" on it at a satellitecity hall store, Ute said.Martin told his mother that he asked to use a UHrestroom — and was told he could — when "ayoung girl overreacted and called police.""He told me he was not impersonating a policeofficer and expected to be found innocent if itwent to trial," Ute said.

home ransacked

On Sunday, Martin woke early and left their Thurston Avenue apartment in Makiki in hiswhite Ford truck without telling his mother where he was going.When Ute returned home from church, shewalked into the apartment they had shared for the past 22 years and found it ransacked."I think it was his way of calling out for attention," Ute said.Much later Sunday afternoon, two police officerscame to Ute's door and said Martin had beeninvolved in an incident and was being treated atThe Queen's Medical Center.At the hospital, two police officers werestationed outside his door and Ute had to waittwo hours to see him."He was sedated," she said. "He had beenwounded in the shoulder and the arm, but thedoctor told me none of his vital organs were hit."

The doctors at Queen's have told her Martin willundergo a complete psychiatric evaluation, withthe goal of helping him get back on track."I've never had anything like this happen to me,"Ute said. "Maybe things had to get to this pointin order for them to help him. He just needs theright kind of help. I can't give that to him. I'm just a mom, not a doctor."Before Sunday, Ute said, she had exhausted thetelephone listings looking for a doctor to helpher son."The line was always the same: 'We don't takeyour insurance,' or, 'We don't take new patients,'" Ute said.

leaning on faith

Ute is strongly religious and said her faith hashelped her since the shooting.She likes to think that she has had two jobs over the past 20 years: One was running a licensedchildcare facility out of the apartment she sharedwith Martin; the other was taking care of Martin."He has a degree in criminology from HCC(Honolulu Community College) and a bachelor'sdegree in business administration from the

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University of Hawai'i," Ute said.Martin talked about becoming a police officer,did volunteer work at the state attorney general'soffice and even worked there part time for a fewmonths, but never really had a steady job.Ute now believes his unsteady work wasprobably due to long-standing mental healthissues. She left upstate New York in 1981 toescape an abusive marriage, and Martin was bornin Hawai'i several months later."Even when he was a little boy, he had a lot of energy," Ute said. "I raised him by myself andnever had any help. I wanted to take him to ballgames, but I didn't have a car. But he was alwaysloved, and he always had his own room."

FBI inquiry launched

The FBI yesterday said a three-personinvestigative unit from the FBI's headquarters inWashington, D.C., was scheduled to arrive inHonolulu yesterday afternoon to conduct areview of the shooting.Special Agent Thomas Simon of the FBI'sHonolulu office said the review by the ShootingIncident Response Team is standard FBI policy ininstances where deadly force is used.The FBI team will meet with Honolulu police,review their incident reports and possiblyinterview witnesses, Simon said."We expect that this review will be completed byFriday," Simon said in a statement. "The SIRT willtake their findings back to ... Washington, D.C.,where they will be presented to the FBI'sShooting Incident Review Group for a finaldetermination of whether this shooting was incompliance with the FBI's deadly force policy."

Reach David Waite at dwaite@honoluluadvertiser.com.

AdvertisementUte Boegel says her son, Martin, had stopped takingmedicine for a mental disorder.Photos by DEBORAH BOOKER | The HonoluluAdvertiser