Around 1:45 a.m. Sunday, Jonathan Johnson told a friend he needed to head home. He had been drinking, and he had to work at IHOP in the morning.
He set out into the night on foot. He was headed to a low-cost Midtown motel he'd been staying at for a few days -- a development he was happy about, despite a shared bathroom.
An hour later, he would be dead.
Just before 2:20 a.m., Anchorage police say, Johnson walked into the City Center Motel at 604 W. 26th Ave., argued with a clerk and fired a shot at him.
The bullet came close enough to put a hole in the clerk's shirt, but didn't injure him.
Police say Johnson then pointed the gun at other people in the lobby area and fled.
The 25-year-old ran down the street, taking his own life with a single gunshot just as he reached the intersection with Arctic Boulevard, police said.
On Sunday, Ashley Kelley, a mother and preschool teacher in Anchorage, said she had been close with Johnson for seven years, after meeting him through mutual acquaintances. It was her house that Johnson left early Sunday morning.
Now, grieving his death, Kelley said she wanted people to know her friend was more than what police described of his final minutes.
"There's so many people who love him and are so sad," Kelley said.
To be sure, Johnson had struggled, she said; he had a drinking problem.
Johnson was raised in Anchorage, she said. After attending Service High School, he worked at a variety of restaurants: Denny's, Red Robin, Village Inn and TGI Fridays.
He liked playing basketball and went to the library every day to get online. It was his quiet place to de-stress, she said.
Johnson walked everywhere in Anchorage -- even across town -- and told friends he carried a gun for protection, Kelley said.
Mixing alcohol and guns had caused problems for him in the past. Court records show that he had pleaded guilty last October to a misdemeanor charge of possessing a gun while intoxicated. In July, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of unlawfully discharging a firearm.
Johnson had lots of friends and modest goals, Kelley said.
"He just wanted to be self-sufficient and financially stable," she said. "He's had a hard time making it on his own."
For years, Johnson and Kelley were roommates. But recently, she said, she asked him to stay elsewhere because of their "conflicting lifestyles."
A few days ago he'd found a place at the City Center Motel, which he said was costing him $40 a night. After couch-surfing, he seemed glad to have a room of his own -- even if was with a shared bathroom.
"He was really, really happy about it," Kelley said.
The City Center Motel, tucked in an alleyway off Arctic Boulevard between Fireweed Lane and Northern Lights, is a place where lots of people live while trying to get back on their feet, said David Logue, a resident of about a month.
It isn't without problems -- in her month living there, Jolene Sawyer said, she'd seen more than one confrontation at the motel.
"Not with a gun, but I've seen violence," she said.
Kelley said she can only guess at what happened between the time Johnson left her house and the altercation at the motel. A clerk working the front desk at the motel declined to comment.
On Sunday afternoon, a small pile of roses was heaped at the spot where Johnson died.
Kelley said she was pained by the way the circumstances of her friend's death seemed to be, at least in online comments, overshadowing his life.
"It makes him look like he was a delinquent, another problem," she said. "He really wasn't. He was trying to do better."