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The body of Spc. Laau Laulusa, 21, of the Hawaii Army National Guard, was discovered in Mililani, a town in central Oahu adjacent to Schofield Barracks, Monday, March 13, 2023.

The body of Spc. Laau Laulusa, 21, of the Hawaii Army National Guard, was discovered in Mililani, a town in central Oahu adjacent to Schofield Barracks, Monday, March 13, 2023. (U.S. Army National Guard)

FORT SHAFTER, Hawaii — Hawaii prosecutors on Wednesday charged a 25-year-old man with second-degree murder in the death earlier this week of a specialist in the Hawaii Army National Guard, according to court documents.

Samuel Jones was also charged with first-degree arson. His bail has been set at $1 million, the documents say.

The body of Spc. Laau Laulusa, 21, was discovered in Mililani, a town in central Oahu adjacent to Schofield Barracks, by firefighters responding to a vehicle fire early Monday, the Hawaii Department of Defense said in a news release Wednesday.

The car was parked at Mililani High School, where witnesses told police they saw a man opening and closing the vehicle’s doors just before the fire began, according to a Wednesday report by KITV-4.

Police arrested Jones about a mile from the car, the news report said.

Laulusa joined the Hawaii Army National Guard in 2019 and was a supply specialist for the 227th Brigade Engineer Battalion, 29th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, the Hawaii Department of Defense said.

“This is a tragic loss for the entire Hawai‘i Army National Guard,” Brig. Gen. Stephen Logan, the Hawaii Guard commander, said in the news release. “We are cooperating with authorities during the ongoing investigation.”

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Wyatt Olson is based in the Honolulu bureau, where he has reported on military and security issues in the Indo-Pacific since 2014. He was Stars and Stripes’ roving Pacific reporter from 2011-2013 while based in Tokyo. He was a freelance writer and journalism teacher in China from 2006-2009.

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