Featured Image Credit: Family Handout / Crime Stoppers Honolulu
Topics: Crime, US News, Weird, True Crime
Joe Harker
Topics: Crime, US News, Weird, True Crime
A photo sent by a teenager who went missing on a hike may contain clues as to what happened to him.
On 27 February, 2015, 18-year-old Daylenn Pua headed out for a hike up Hawaii's popular Haʻikū Stairs, also known as the 'stairway to heaven'.
He'd been visiting his grandma when he decided to go on the hike, but he's never been seen since making the journey.
The stairs were constructed during the Second World War to provide access to a former communication station on Hawaii's O'ahu Island.
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It's a total of 3,922 steps, and Daylenn was sending his grandmother pictures of his journey along the way, though she had warned him not to go.
However, the pictures stopped coming, and the 18-year-old has not been seen since.
Significant search efforts were launched to try and find the teenager, or at least recover his body, but he's not been discovered, and has been missing for over nine years now.
One of his pictures in particular aroused suspicion, as it contained a mysterious figure crouching.
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This figure was dubbed the 'shadow man', though people don't really know what it was. It looks like a figure crouching, but the exact identity isn't clear.
This strange figure is in one of the last photos that Daylenn sent, so if it is a person, then they may have been the last person to see the teenager alive.
Of course, it may be entirely unconnected to his disappearance, and the 18-year-old might have suffered from the perils and pitfalls of going hiking alone on a dangerous trail.
In 2021, a decision was made to dismantle the stairs, and earlier this year, work started on taking them down.
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Trying to access the Haʻikū Stairs now counts as trespassing and is illegal.
Members of the public did used to be allowed to climb the stairs, but they featured in an episode of Magnum P.I. which made them more popular and there were too many visitors.
A number of people have been arrested as a result of climbing the stairs, with CNN reporting that 14 people were arrested for it in the past couple of months.
With the steps being demolished, the climb is dangerous, and given the location, it's a hard place for emergency services to reach.
Jason Redulla, chief of Hawaii’s Division of Conservation and Resources Enforcement, said it was 'incredibly disrespectful and self-centred' for anyone to be trying to make it up the stairs.