Patrick Onishi saw the light from under his daughter's bedroom door at their Nu'uanu home, peeked inside and saw her asleep.

He went to bed moments later, but then heard a "thunderous thump," a sound like a "stampede" and then a loud crash.

When he and his wife, Gayle, rushed to daughter Dara's room, Onishi saw a huge hole in the bedroom floor and a boulder resting a flight down in the family room of their two-story Henry Street home.

"It look like a bomb exploded in our house," Onishi said.

Onishi said when they called out for Dara, he heard a horrendous scream and screech and realized she was under the rubble and the boulder.

"It was like somebody was having a horrible nightmare and was trying to get out of it," he recalled.

He said he felt helpless, unable to get to his daughter. He then felt relieved when the screaming stopped because it meant his daughter was unconscious, he said.

But after firefighters, police and others arrived to help, they approached Onishi and his wife and told them, "We're very sorry."

"Both Gayle and I knew what had happened," he said.

Dara Onishi, 26, was dead, the victim of a 5-ton boulder that crashed through her bedroom at about 1:40 a.m. on Aug. 9, 2002.

Her death stunned the community and triggered heightened concerns about falling rocks and landslides around O'ahu.

Patrick Onishi talked publicly for the first time about his daughter's death yesterday, the first witness in a civil trial in the family's lawsuit against the city.

Lawyers for both the Onishi family and the city agreed that the death was a horrendous tragedy. Dara Onishi was a well-liked and accomplished young woman, a noted classical pianist who graduated from Yale University in three years and was about to pursue a master's degree in education from Columbia University.

The issue for the jury will be whether the city should be held responsible for her death.

In opening statements, Onishi family lawyer Steven Kim said the city maintained a drainage system that funneled rainwater through a ditch on the side of Pacific Heights Road and through an 8-inch pipe that emptied in the hillside above the Onishi home.

Kim said the family's experts will show that the boulder was in the path of that rainwater, which eroded support and led to the tragedy.

"We're going to show that the water flow was a significant cause of the boulder coming down at that moment," Kim told the jury.

He did not mention how much money they will seek.

City Deputy Corporation Counsel Derek Mayeshiro told the jury the city will present experts to show that the boulder came from another part of the hillside that wasn't in the path of the rainwater from the drainage system.

He also said it wasn't raining before the boulder came crashing down.

The death was the result of a "terrible, terrible accident, but that's all it was, an accident," Mayeshiro said.

Patrick Onishi, 61, an architect who served as city planning director from 1995 to 1998, appeared composed as he testified not only about his daughter's death, but her life and her accomplishments.

He said his daughter, the middle child between two brothers, was a ballet dancer and a classical pianist who played with the Honolulu Symphony and in competitions around the country.

Dara Onishi was working as an administrative assistant to then-city managing director Ben Lee when she died, but was also preparing to attend Columbia University for a master's degree in education, her father said.

He said the family still lives at the Henry Street home.

"Life is never going to be the same," he said. "We continue to remind ourselves that we're not the only ones in the world that suffer this type of loss."

The father said they don't talk much about religion, but said they are a Christian family and found solace in his daughter taking communion at church the Sunday prior to her death.

"That was very consoling to us," Onishi said.

He also said he viewed the death as part of life experience.

"We tried to approach it philosophically to understand that there are no guarantees in life," he testified.

He said the family tries to focus on the positives, such as being "thankful for having a daughter like Dara, thankful for having to enjoy her for as long as we did."

The Onishis also sued Pacific Heights landowners Hiroko and Vance Vaughan, contending that the boulder came from their property. That case was settled, but the terms are under seal.

The trial in Circuit Judge Karen Ahn's courtroom could last as long as two weeks.

Reach Ken Kobayashi at kkobayashi@honoluluadvertiser.com.