Mat-Su assemblyman's son killed while stealing drugs

Jeremy Ewing was shot after struggling with someone in the home, said his family and the Alaska State Troopers.

His father, Assemblyman and former Wasilla City Councilman Mark Ewing, said he believes his son acted as part of a ring set up by people he met while jailed at Palmer Correctional Center earlier this year.

Troopers confirmed that Jeremy Ewing broke into the Palmer area home to steal marijuana and said they are investigating the case. Two arrests have been made, but Sergeant Michelyn Grigg on Thursday refused to disclose the names of the people arrested.

"To protect the integrity of the case and to protect the witnesses we have, we're not going to release the names," she said.

Details leading up to Jeremy's death are still unclear, but his father said the shooting ended a turbulent life of frequent homelessness and a recent diagnosis of severe mental illness .

Mark Ewing said his son had a history of run-ins with the law, although a public database of court cases indicates most charges against him were dismissed. Jeremy frequently lived on the street despite offers of a warm bed from family and friends.

While in jail this year for stealing a vehicle after drinking and running an officer off the road, Jeremy was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, Mark Ewing said. Family members arranged residential treatment for him, but he refused to go.

"Because he was paranoid, he thought the family was conspiring against him," Mark Ewing said Thursday.

His family knew Jeremy Ewing as a free spirit who did spot-on sound impressions and occasionally stand-up comedy in Anchorage. Not long ago he lived in San Diego and said he was offered a part in the second "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie. His grandfather's health was failing so, according to Jeremy, he turned down the part to be with his "Pap."

But he also thought he was invisible when he dressed in black like a ninja, Mark Ewing said.

Ewing said his son's behavior became gradually more erratic. He'd go missing for months and his family worried about him, especially in the winter. He camped in a trailer without heat in Anchorage last winter.

"One night he was found in the dumpster behind Carrs, two blocks from my house. If he'd have come up, I'd have given him a place to stay," Ewing said. "I knew someday I'd get a call. I figured it would be from Anchorage P.D., that they found him frozen to death in one of those homeless camps."

When Jeremy went to jail in January, Ewing said it was after getting lost while walking on a snowmachine trail he thought would take him home. Dressed in street clothes and freezing, his son saw lights on in a house and knocked on the door, Ewing said. A woman answered the door but shut it when Jeremy attempted to enter. Ewing said Jeremy threw snowballs at the house for a while, then stole a plow truck and nearly hit a trooper driving in the other direction.

Ewing said he could have bailed Jeremy out -- the bail was $500. But he chose to let him stay where he could undergo psychiatric evaluation and treatment, where he was warm and dry and fed. He was out of jail about two weeks before attempting to sneak into the house near Palmer to steal drugs.

"It's taken us as a real shock, the way he went. He wasn't that type of person. But you know, you hang out with the wrong people," Ewing said.

Ewing said it's made him determined to actively work toward building a homeless shelter in the Valley and to overturn legislation that makes it difficult for families to get mental health treatment for loved ones older than 18.

"Out here in the Valley, we choose to ignore it (homelessness). It's time we belly up and find a location to overnight these people out of the cold," he said.

"I'm not blaming any of that on his death."

Find Daily News reporter Rindi White online at www.adn.com/contact/rwhite or call her at 1-907-352-6709.