Crime & Courts

Trial begins for man charged in fatal shooting outside Anchorage bar

A man state prosecutors say fatally shot 27-year-old Said Beshirov outside a now-defunct Anchorage nightclub in 2012 appeared in Anchorage Superior Court on Wednesday, more than two years after the killing.

Korakanh Phornsavanh is accused of shooting Beshirov during bar break outside Platinum Jaxx on Oct. 28, 2012. It wasn't until about eight months later that a grand jury indicted Phornsavanh, 28, on murder charges.

Video footage, recorded on cellphones, was shown in court Tuesday. The video revealed a chaotic scene, with revelers spilling off the sidewalk and onto West Sixth Avenue.

One brief video pans from Phornsavanh, Beshirov and others to another group brawling in the street. Seconds later, two shots are fired and the camera pans back. Beshirov can be seen lying on his back before the video cuts out.

Assistant District Attorney Jenna Gruenstein said detectives interviewed upward of 40 witnesses after the shooting. They provided various accounts of the murder; many didn't know what they had seen, she said.

However, the prosecutor said that despite witnesses identifying another man as the shooter, the state is positive Phornsavanh pulled the trigger.

"Korakanh Phornsavanh brought a gun to a fistfight," she said.

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Defense attorney Daniel Lowery spent the majority of his opening statement listing witnesses who reported another man had killed Beshirov. Lowery named the man, but Alaska Dispatch News is not printing the name since he has not been charged with a crime.

Lowery said both parties agree Beshirov was murdered, but it wasn't his client who was responsible.

Because Phornsavanh was indicted in a closed grand jury hearing rather than with information detectives filed in court, many details of the investigation were not made public until Wednesday, when the trial began.

State: Witness statements aren’t accurate

The state said Beshirov was "stone-cold sober" while enjoying a typical night out with friends, and that Phornsavanh and his posse ended their night by picking a fight.

Phornsavanh was central in the violence leading up to the shooting, Gruenstein said. He started a fight with a group of girls, she said, then he punched an unsuspecting man in the back of the head. Multiple people began to throw kicks and punches, videos showed.

The victim and suspect ended up across the avenue. Phornsavanh took a swing at Beshirov, who attempted to de-escalate the situation, the prosecutor argued.

Beshirov, a kickboxer, is seen in footage approaching three men fighting across from the bar with his hands up. His "peacekeeping gesture," as Gruenstein called it, was ignored as a man dressed in a red sweatshirt and a red Cincinnati Reds hat with his face painted black and white swung at Beshirov. The blow was blocked and countered.

The prosecutor said the man in red was Phornsavanh; he eventually admitted as much to the police, she said.

Phornsavanh never gave a confession, though. The video does not show who fired the shots, but the state contends it shows the defendant approaching Beshirov with a hand behind his back moments before two shots were fired.

Warning: The video below contains graphic images and language.

Prosecutors plan to rely on the inconsistency of witness statements, paired with the video footage, to prove their case.

Since it was Halloween weekend, many bargoers were dressed in costumes the night Beshirov was killed. Gruenstein said no one mentioned a man in red, but video evidence proves Phornsavanh was there. The state will call a psychology expert to testify about various ways people's memories are altered.

Alcohol, adrenaline, fear and exhaustion were all factors that caused the death of a young man, she said.

'Nobody' implicated defendant

Meanwhile, Lowery, the defense attorney, said witness statements implicated someone else, not Phornsavanh, in Beshirov's death.

Four men the defense has dubbed "the four cowboys" were also there on the night of the fight. All four men were dressed in black vests and white button-down shirts. Two of them wore masks -- Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, Lowery said.

He displayed a picture taken from cellphone footage showing the arm of one of those men extended toward someone off screen.

Multiple witnesses reported seeing the raised arm; one witness told police the man was holding a firearm, Lowery said.

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A friend of Beshirov's stood next to him as the shots were fired. That friend told police the shooter was wearing clothes used to describe the four cowboys, Lowery argued.

Anchorage police Sgt. Larry Osche, who saw the shooting, will testify that he remembers a tall man with a ponytail discharging a gun, Lowery said. That long-haired suspect is another of the four cowboys, according to testimony.

After listing the multiple witnesses who pinned one of "the four cowboys" as responsible for the crime, Lowery asked the jury to consider who suggested his client as the shooter.

Lowery displayed a slide with a single word in its center: "Nobody."

"Not a single person. … Every eyewitness will categorically exclude (Phornsavan) as the shooter," he said.

Lowery also asked jurors to consider the state's lack of evidence. There is no confession or forensic evidence, he said.

Police never found a murder weapon, Lowery said.

They found more than a dozen shell casings in front of the bar, the majority of which were old and worn, according to the state. Two newer .380-caliber shell casings were recovered. That's the weapon police believe was used to kill Beshirov.

The trial is expected to last up to a month. Witness testimony will start Thursday.

Jerzy Shedlock

Jerzy Shedlock is a former reporter for Alaska Dispatch News. He left the ADN in 2017.

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