The 45-year-old homeless woman shot and critically injured yesterday by police after she lunged at them with a metal skewer and rod was described by those who know her as mentally unstable and prone to erratic behavior.

Witnesses say the woman was screaming and crying for at least 30 minutes before police arrived at the intersection of South King Street and Kalakaua Avenue, where the shooting happened.

"She was over there having a schizophrenic epi-sode," said a homeless man who lives in the area and knows the woman who was shot.

The shooting is the second by a Honolulu Police Department officer in less than a week and has garnered the attention of mental-health advocates, who have been raising concerns about the state's cutbacks to mental-health services statewide.

It's unclear whether the woman involved was receiving services that saw cuts.

But advocates say the shooting is a stark reminder of what can go wrong when the severely mentally ill don't get medications, therapy and monitoring.

"This is exactly the kind of thing we want not to happen and yes, it's going to happen if we don't understand that mental-health services are crucial to the fabric of the Islands," said Marya Grambs, executive director of Mental Health America of Hawai'i, an advocacy nonprofit.

Those who knew the homeless woman say she has exhibited erratic behavior before, including unexpectedly yelling during a conversation or easily getting agitated. But they also said they had never seen her become violent.

The woman spends much of her time during the day, they said, at the McDonald's or Wal-Mart on Ke'eaumoku Avenue.

A McDonald's representative said yesterday that the woman rarely bothered customers and largely kept to herself, but has been asked to leave several times because she put her feet up on the tables.

The police had to be called at least once when the woman got agitated and started yelling at a McDonald's employee and scaring patrons.

4 CHARGES FILED

People who know the woman said she has been in the Pawa'a area since at least December. She was in front of the Signs Today store on South King Street just before 2 a.m. yesterday when she started screaming and crying, witnesses said.

A security guard for the Continental building called police. When they got to the scene, the woman started threatening them with a 14-inch metal rod and an 18-inch metal skewer and they tried to persuade her to put them down, police Maj. Frank Fujii said.

Police said the woman was not cooperating and started walking onto South King Street. One of the officers approached her and tried to persuade her to get back onto the sidewalk, Fujii said, which is when she apparently lunged at the police officers.

One officer fired two shots at the woman with his service handgun.

Another officer fired a Taser gun, though it's unclear if it hit the woman.

The woman was taken in critical but stable condition to The Queen's Medical Center.

Witnesses said the woman was shot near the front of the Continental building, where she was apparently spending the night. They said they were across the street and didn't hear police saying anything to the woman, but they did hear two loud gunshots.

Witnesses also said that shortly before the homeless woman started screaming, there was a group of young men nearby who got into an argument. The witnesses, all of whom were homeless in the area, theorized that the argument may have set the woman off.

Police said the homeless woman faces three counts of first-degree terroristic threatening for allegedly threatening the police officers and one count of second-degree terroristic threatening for alleged threats made against the private security guard.

OFFICER ON LEAVE

The 10-year veteran of HPD who shot the woman has been put on administrative leave, pending an internal review of the incident, which is standard procedure in such cases.

The officer who fired a Taser is a nine-year veteran of HPD. He is not on administrative leave, a police department spokesman said.

The shooting comes on the heels of a shooting by a police officer in Makaha on March 28.

In that case, the off-duty officer was leaving a 7-Eleven when he said he was attacked while sitting in his car. The police officer shot at the suspect, 25-year-old Kiha Silva, using his personal gun because he said he feared for his life and was about to black out.