New Year starts off with a bang in Anchorage

Jerod Alexander had a rough last decade, and the next one isn’t shaping up to be any better.

He had been on the lam for months, after absconding from a halfway house in Anchorage.

Then came New Year’s Eve, and some type of altercation between a small group of men in a Russian Jack neighborhood. Someone pulled a gun, shots were fired, and a man ended up shot in the arm, knee, and hip.

It started at 1:25 am Tuesday morning when police were called to the scene near 8400 5th Avenue in the Russian Jack neighborhood, where responders tried to sort the stories out, talk to witnesses, and get the gunshot victim to the hospital, where he was in surgery on Tuesday afternoon.

There were .45-caliber shell casings on the ground, bullet holes in the house, and blood on the porch.

One of the suspects, Alexander, was already known to police as someone who had a warrant for his arrest since July. He fled the scene, but police arrested 27-year-old Cody Heanu, who was remanded at the Anchorage Jail on multiple charges including Assault I, Firing a Weapon at a Dwelling, and Misconduct Involving Weapons II.  It’s Heanu’s first brush with the law.

Alexander wasn’t coming in so easy. All the while, the snow began falling and piling up in drifts, the temperatures quickly dropped, and the hours were ticking by. By the time police got to Alexander in the Fairview neighborhood on Wednesday morning, the snow was blowing, and the temperatures were in the teens, as a blizzard moved through, the same one that closed Seward Highway near Girdwood.

And all this, plus regular bursts of fireworks across the hood.

By 6 am on New Year’s Day, police were cordoning off an area around an apartment building on East 4th Street and calling in the SWAT. Neighbors were warned there may be tear gas in use. The police said they might use a drone. Police asked the public to not post on social media any pictures of the situation, so as to protect the officers.

After a standoff, Alexander was taken into custody. His arrest, just a few blocks from the Anchorage Jail, brought to an end his six-months of living on the run. He was remanded on multiple charges, including Assault I, Misconduct Involving Weapons, Trespassing, and Resisting.

Alexander’s rap sheet started with underage drinking in 2008 and a list of other misdemeanor charges. In 2012, the Drug Enforcement Agency seized property of his worth $16,679, as a result of it being involved in drug trafficking.

A felony arrest warrant had been issued for Alexander after he walked away from the Cordova Center, a halfway house, in July. He had been sent there after being charged with Resisting Arrest and Escape.

That is how 2019 ended and how 2020 began with violent crime in Anchorage.