Four months into 2019, Anchorage on pace to break homicide record

Anchorage police are investigating the 14th homicide in the city this year.

Officers called to an East Anchorage street corner a little after 1 a.m. Friday found a man face-down near a bus stop with “signs of trauma,” according to a police news release. Police have not released the man’s name or said how he was killed, nor have they revealed the identity of a so-called person of interest taken into custody for questioning.

Through the first four months of 2019, Anchorage is now on pace to surpass the 35 homicides that occurred in 2017, the most ever in Alaska’s largest city during a calendar year. That broke a record — by one death — set the year before.

According to the Anchorage Police Department, officers have made arrests in seven of the 14 homicides this year. In one case, the suspect died in what police called a murder-suicide.

There have also been two fatal officer-involved shootings in Anchorage in 2019.

Casey Grove is host of Alaska News Nightly, a general assignment reporter and an editor at Alaska Public Media. Reach him at cgrove@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Casey here

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