A 21-year-old woman was beaten to death with a hammer and her 40-year-old boyfriend was hospitalized in critical condition with stab wounds to the belly after an altercation at a pig farm in Wai'anae last night, police said.

Honolulu police Lt. Bill Kato said the man told police he had attacked the woman. He would not say how the man was wounded, but dispatchers who took the 911 calls shortly before 5 p.m. said on the police radio that the man was suicidal and had cut himself.

The man was taken by ambulance to nearby Wai'anae Coast Comprehensive Health Center, then flown by helicopter to The Queen's Medical Center.

Family members of the woman gathered on Ma'ili'ili Road around the dirt road to the pig farmer's home, which sat well back from the road. Kato described it as a two-room shack.

Some of the more than two dozen people wept. Some were angry.

Pricilla Anderson said she was waiting for authorities to remove the body of her sister, Shantel Figueroa, a happy-go-lucky woman who had a mind of her own but was always willing to lend a hand to a person in need.

"She's in there, dead on his floor," she said.

Figueroa's aunt, Belinda Torres, said Figueroa had dated the pig farmer for about a year. The on-and-off relationship had been violent in the past, she said, but the two seemed to be trying to get back together.

Torres said the farmer and Figueroa were at Torres' home before the killing, and had argued. The two seemed to make up before they left together, she said.

Butch Anderson, Figueroa's cousin, said a friend drove the couple to the man's farm, and that he had ridden along. The couple seemed to be getting along.

"They were just talking story," he said. "Normal."

As they got out of the car, Figueroa told him she was going to help the man feed the pigs, and would return home afterward, he said.

Within an hour, family members said, the pig farmer was on the phone to them.

"He called me and said he had killed my niece," Torres said.

Family members rushed to the pig farm, but police were already there and restrained them. Two cousins were arrested for trying to force their way past the police line, Torres and Pricilla Anderson said.

Anderson and Torres thought Figueroa had been shot in the head.

But Kato said the woman had died of head wounds, inflicted with a hammer.

The man "had a large laceration to the stomach," he said.

Police recovered both the hammer and knife at the scene, he said.

Reach Karen Blakeman at kblakeman@honoluluadvertiser.com.