The 20-year-old Maui woman killed by police responding to an abuse call on Saturday had moved toward an officer with a small knife, according to body camera footage shown at a news conference at police department headquarters on Tuesday afternoon.

That was among the new details of Maui’s first officer-involved shooting of 2025, many of them based on a portion of the video from cameras worn by the two officers, which depicted events leading up to — but stopping short of — the shooting. Police Capt. Nelson Hamilton also shared photos of a knife recovered from the scene.  

When police first encountered Macayla Deponte at a Pukalani home just before 4 p.m. on Saturday, she had barricaded herself in a bedroom with a knife, Hamilton told the small group of reporters. Officers tried to communicate with her from outside the room, he said, but Deponte yelled incoherently while playing loud music.

Just a few minutes later, Deponte can be seen in the video wearing a silver tank top and black mini-skirt as she walks into the kitchen from the bedroom. She is holding a knife with about a five-inch blade.

“Let me see your hands. Put the fucking knife down,” officers yell at Deponte.

Instead, Deponte raises the knife and moves steadily toward an officer, who Hamilton said then fired his gun twice in her direction.

Though officers attempted life-saving measures, Deponte died as a result of the shooting, becoming the eighth person killed during encounters with officers on the island in the past 15 years, according to data released to Civil Beat.

“We recognize that a family is grieving the loss of a loved one; there are no winners in critical incidents, everyone is impacted,” said Hamilton, standing at a podium and flanked by other high-ranking members of the department. “Police officers are called to make split-second decisions in rapidly dynamic, evolving situations and, when faced with an imminent threat, they must react to protect themselves and others in the community.”

Hamilton did not provide the name of the officer who shot Deponte, but Alana Pico, a spokesperson for the Maui Police Department, previously said the officer had been placed on administrative leave, which follows the department’s standard protocol.

Pico declined to answer emailed questions asking whether Deponte lived in the home where the shooting took place or whether anyone else was present at the time, citing the ongoing investigation. At the news conference, Hamilton said another officer had been armed with a taser, but he did not say whether the taser was used.

Hamilton described the events leading up to the shooting as “a stark reminder” of the risks police officers face, and he said that, if Deponte had survived, she “would have been charged with attempted murder in the first degree.”

Civil Beat’s coverage of Maui County is supported in part by a grant from the Nuestro Futuro Foundation.