There were no updates in the case until 2019 when cold case detectives asked a forensic biology unit to examine several items of evidence from the scene, including Momohara's underwear

Before Dawn Momohara was killed, she got a call from an unknown male and told her mother she was going to a shopping center. That was the last time her mom saw her, police said.

Susie Chun Oakland arrived to a crime scene at McKinley High School in Honolulu that March morning nearly a half century ago.

Honolulu Police say modern forensic tests allowed them to identify and arrest a suspect in Dawn Momohara's 1977 murder.

The unsolved death of a teenager in 1977 haunted students and staff at Honolulu's McKinley High School for nearly half a century. But last week, police used advances in DNA

DNA evidence helped lead long-stymied detectives to a suspect in the murder of Dawn Momohara, 16, who was strangled and found dead at her high school.

Nearly five decades after her partially clothed body was discovered on the second floor of her Honolulu high school, modern DNA testing has led to an arrest that could solve the cold case murder of 16-year-old Dawn Momohara.

An arrest has been made 48 years after 16-year-old Hawaii girl Dawn Momohara was found in a Honolulu high school.

Student Dawn Momohara, 16, was found dead inside McKinley High School on Monday, March 21, 1977, according to the Honolulu Police Department. “A teacher had found her and it was early in the morning, second floor of the English building,” Susie Chun Oakland, a former student, told KHON in 2019.