No charges in fatal shooting of Tacoma man who’d been showing ‘erratic behavior’
In the months leading up to Tuuaipea Masaniai’s death in a Tacoma parking lot, there were signs he was struggling with mental health issues.
The 29-year-old was mumbling to himself and laughing. He called 911 out of fear there was a ghost in his apartment. Police were called after Masaniai used a crawl space to get onto the roof of his apartment complex in the middle of the night because he was hearing things.
His next-door neighbor, who would eventually shoot and kill Masaniai, told detectives he bought a handgun “due to ongoing fear of Masaniai’s escalating behavior,” according to police reports.
Masaniai was one of 31 homicides in Tacoma last year. He was fatally shot April 22 outside the Terra Heights apartments, where he lived alone. Prosecutors declined to file criminal charges against the shooter, his 28-year-old neighbor, because they believe he acted in self-defense.
Concerns for his well-being
Masaniai moved to Lakewood from Samoa about four years ago with his wife and three children. The couple had a daughter while living in Washington state.
Their family splintered July 8, 2019, after Masaniai’s wife locked him out of their apartment and called 911.
She told officers Masaniai had accused her of cheating on him, choked her, held a knife to her throat, threatened to kill her and punched both her and their 4-month-old daughter during the attack. His wife told police she was scared of him, and that the abuse wasn’t new.
Pierce County prosecutors charged Masaniai with two counts of second-degree assault, reckless endangerment and fourth-degree assault. A no-contact order was issued, ordering him to keep away from his family.
The charges were dropped in September 2020 because prosecutors couldn’t find Masaniai’s wife to pursue the case. Family members said she fled to California.
One of Masaniai’s 11 siblings told detectives he had been “going crazy over his wife and kids,” and they were concerned for his well-being, police reports said.
His sister did not know if Masaniai had ever been diagnosed with or received treatment for mental health problems, but she knew he had been taken to St. Claire Hospital in Lakewood for mental health issues just two days before he died. Masaniai refused to stay in the hospital and left, crashing with his sister for the night.
She told police he was talking and laughing to himself during his stay, and that the day he was shot Masaniai broke into a stranger’s pickup at a gas station and just sat inside until the truck’s owner chased him off.
A single shot to the chest
On April 22, neighbors said they saw Masaniai leaving his apartment looking upset and clutching what appeared to be a metal pipe. It would turn out to be a 3-foot section of a shower rod.
His neighbor left his own apartment shortly before Masaniai. He was chatting to his cousin on the phone when he got inside his Fiat 500x, pausing for a moment to fiddle with the Bluetooth so the conversation could continue.
That’s when he said he heard a bang, looked up and realized Masaniai had struck his car with a metal pipe.
The neighbor got out of the car and confronted Masaniai, telling him he was going to record his behavior with his cell phone and call police.
Masaniai allegedly tried to swat the cell phone out of his neighbor’s hand, then pointed the pipe in his face.
The neighbor told him he had a gun, briefly lifting his shirt to show Masaniai the weapon holstered on his hip, and told Masaniai to back up.
Masaniai swung the pipe at his neighbor, striking him on the shoulder, records say. The two men struggled over the shower rod until Masaniai allegedly punched his neighbor then grabbed his shirt.
The neighbor “just reacted” and fired a single shot without aiming, striking Masaniai in the chest, according to police reports.
“I just feel him grabbing me as I’m dazed and that’s when I just like started reaching for my gun instinctively as he was reaching down,” the neighbor told detectives in an interview. “Because that’s the only thing I have. ... I just don’t want him to grab my gun and shoot me with it.”
After the shot was fired, the neighbor yelled for help and called 911. He told dispatchers he had placed his gun on the floorboard of his car. Then he sent a text message about the shooting to his wife, who was waiting for him to pick her up from work.
Masaniai was pronounced dead at the scene.
His neighbor was taken to Tacoma General Hospital with complaints of shoulder and neck pain.
‘Erratic behavior’
After the shooting, investigators searched Masaniai’s one-bedroom apartment and found a mess.
There were blood smears outside his front door, as well as a bag of suspected methamphetamine. All the doors and cabinets had been pulled off the hinges. Kitchen drawers were pulled out and dumped in the living room. There were several holes punched in doors and walls. Mirrors were broken. The other half of the shower rod leaned against a chair.
An officer who responded to the homicide told detectives he was aware of “at least two recent mental episodes which Masaniai has had,” according to a police report.
It turns out there were four 911 calls involving Masaniai at the Tacoma apartment complex in the 2300 block of South 96th Street.
The first occurred in February when he called 911 and told dispatchers he no longer wanted to live in a “scary” place and that he suspected his apartment had ghosts. Then the week before Masaniai’s death, his neighbor called 911 around 2:20 a.m. to report suspicions that Masaniai was on the roof and trying to break through the drywall into his apartment.
Officers responded and discovered Masaniai had used a crawl space in the laundry room to access the roof he was “hearing things and wanted to see what was up there,” according to police reports.
Police took no action, saying the laundry room was a shared space.
Later that day, the neighbor again called 911 complaining that Masaniai was repeatedly pounding on their shared wall and knocking on his door asking for his wife.
Two days later on April 17, the fire alarm went off in the building and all residents had to be evacuated. Firefighters found Masaniai’s apartment flooded due to fire sprinklers, but Masaniai was no longer there. It’s unclear what caused the fire alarm to go off.
His neighbor told police Masaniai seemed to be getting worse since September, and that they tried to warn people about Masaniai’s “erratic behavior,” records say.
This story was originally published January 7, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
