On Oct. 26, 2017 Anchorage police started getting calls from Mountain View in Anchorage about shots being fired. People hunkered down in their homes, held their children close.
By 1 am, there was a patrol car trolling the area. The officer was flagged down by a man at the 100 block of Ridgeline Loop, who reported someone had just tried to rob him and had shot at him.
The victim told police he had ridden his bike home from the Shell gas station nearby. As he was opening his garage door with the key pad, a man got out of the driver’s side of a car parked in front of his home.
The robber produced a gun, followed the victim into his garage, and tried to force his way into the house. The robber then ordered the victim to empty his pockets, at which point the victim tried to knock the gun out of the man’s hand.
That’s when the suspect fired, shooting at the victim from both inside and outside the garage. Luckily, he was a bad shot and the victim wasn’t hit. Police recovered bullet casings.
The suspect was 18-year-old Charles Sadler. He was located about a half hour later based on the description given to the officer, and he was stopped at the corner of Thompson and North Flower. He had two guns in his car. One was reported as stolen.
Sadler was charged with Robbery 1, Misconduct Involving a Weapon II, Assault II, and Theft II.
He pled guilty on the robbery charge (armed with a deadly weapon) and other charges were dismissed.
On Jan.5 he was sentenced to serve time. But then he was placed in a halfway house.
By Feb. 15, he had left the Cordova Center, the halfway house, with permission only to never return to the facility that is on contract with the Department of Corrections to help prisoners re-enter society.
It’s been less than three months since the armed robbery to the conviction, to the incarceration in a low-supervision facility, to the inevitable escape.
Sadler is 19 now and has been on the run for a week. He doesn’t have a long list of priors, at least in his short adulthood. But rather than his June, 2018 release date, when he could turn over a new page in his life, he’ll be looking at prison when the law catches up with him.
Anchorage is hoping that’s sooner, rather than later, considering his history with stolen guns and his willingness to use them.
