KAILUA-KONA (AP) — A car crash killed Big Island resident Alana Lavaka’s husband in May, but Lavaka wants people to know he chose her life over his when time was ticking away.
When Lavaka and her late husband, Hailame, got into a car crash on May 17, they exchanged words before the situation turned deadly.
Hailame pushed Lavaka out of the truck after the crash, telling her, “‘Just go, just go, go now, go now,’” she said.
The couple’s vehicle was hit head-on by a sport utility vehicle that police have said was passing cars and lost control. The two men who were in the SUV died.
“I said, ‘Come on, please, help me please, you gotta help me, I can’t drag you by myself!’” Lavaka responded to her husband.
After answering him, she recalls being fully pulled out of the vehicle by someone else, who she thinks was a police officer.
The person turned to go back for Hailame as the vehicle burst into flames.
“I remember laying there but I remember my foot hurting as I tried to yank my husband to drag him out with me. … I took off his belt and I tried to drag him with me to go with me,” Lavaka said. “It’s just hard. It hit me today that my husband is gone.”
Lavaka was still in the hospital on Friday, recovering from a broken back, broken leg, broken ribs and a broken sternum.
Lavaka is proud of her husband for being a caring man — all the way to the end.
“He was just a loving person and a man of God,” Lavaka said.
“He always wanted to help people. That’s just how he was.”
