Homeless death under homicide investigation

Police report that a middle-aged man found dead in a homeless camp Thursday may have been killed by someone. A press release on the death only identified the man as between 40-45 years old and having been discovered by a private citizen who believed he may have been asleep. He was in the area near the Mulcahy sports complex along the Chester Creek Trail system and an autopsy was ordered. The man's death was classified by police as the third homicide of the year in Anchorage. Homeless camps are everywhere in Anchorage's urban wilderness, and on any given night there may be as many as 4,000 members of the community without a roof over their head, according to advocacy agencies and the American Civil Liberties Union. Nine "homeless" people have died since the beginning of 2010 within Anchorage, according to a police department spokesperson, and Thursday's death marked the second homicide. A person is classified as homeless if they do not have a residential address -- but that does not include others who are between homes, unintentionally transient, or who have an address but choose instead to live in the city's myriad wooded areas and parks. An accurate number of homeless deaths in the municipality depends on how the deceased are classified, and different groups provide different data. Some suggest as many as two dozen people between homes or intentionally living outside have died in the last two years.