A shooting outside a Spenard club Saturday morning has left an 18-year-old with a bullet lodged in his brain and his family wondering if he's going to live.
Luis Soriano was shot in the head while he was waiting in his car for his cousin to exit the Alano Club, where teens and young adults were streaming out after a fracas erupted on the dance floor.
Saturday evening Soriano remained in critical condition, according to his 24-year-old sister, Pura.
No arrests had been made, police said.
Soriano was at a late-night teen party at the Spenard Road club, best known as a longtime Anchorage hangout for recovering alcoholics. It was not immediately clear on Saturday who was hosting the party or if it had anything to do with the Alano Club's normal clientele.
Gerri Mayor, a volunteer collecting door-entry fees, said about 100 young adults, all older than 17, showed up for the party.
"We did ID checks and pat-downs before they entered," she said. "We did what we were supposed to."
Police say some sort of scuffle broke out inside the club at about 3 a.m. They said they don't know what started it.
Mayor heard noise and looked around to see boys throwing chairs at each other, she said. While some, mostly boys, joined the fray, others, mostly girls, rushed to escape outside.
That rush for the door started a general exodus out the back, she said.
"I heard someone say, 'He has a gun,' but I was so busy it didn't register," she said. She was trying to keep people from crushing each other as they exited.
Things seemed to calm down for a few moments, she said.
Then someone opened fire in the parking lot.
Multiple shots were fired, according to evidence gathered by police.
Sgt. James Triplett said he didn't know if Soriano was the gunman's target or if he was a bystander. Soriano's sister didn't know either.
The victim, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, quit East High last year and has been cleaning at a bank for a living, according to his sister. He liked to dance and often went out looking for parties with his cousins.
She said there is a street gang of Dominicans in Anchorage but her brother didn't have anything to do with them. "He thought that stuff was stupid," she said.
Pura Soriano spent all day at the hospital at her young brother's bedside. "Everybody's sad because we just don't know what is going to happen," she said.
This is the second recent shooting at a late-night teen party. In mid-March, 16-year-old Colton Crow was killed at a warehouse party on Homer Drive. Police arrested Oscar J. Lajoie, 29, and charged him with second-degree murder. Triplett said he didn't believe the two shootings were related.
Find Megan Holland online at adn.com/contact/mholland or call 257-4343.
By MEGAN HOLLAND
mholland@adn.com