HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - Authorities are investigating a beating on an east Kaua’i shoreline that left a man near death, crying out for help on the side of a busy highway.

Loved ones identified the victim of the attack as 56-year-old David La’amea.

They say he was houseless for some time, and was living on the shores of Wailua Beach across the old Coco Palms Hotel when he was brutally attacked. It happened sometime in the evening of Sunday Aug. 24.

His niece, Tita Vargas, was told that a bicyclist heard La’amea crying out for help around 9:30, and called 911.

“It’s traumatizing knowing that he went out like that,” Vargas said.

He was hospitalized with severe injuries and later flown to Oahu where he died four days later.

“They punched him in his face so he had a blackeye. He had st

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