Anchorage Daily News

A man was found shot to death Thursday afternoon in a stairwell inside the J.C. Penney parking garage on Sixth Avenue, the third Anchorage homicide in four days, police said.

The victim had not been identified by late Thursday. Police declined to discuss any details of the slaying, including the circumstances of the shooting and whether they had suspects.

The death follows the slaying early this week of a woman in Mountain View and another Tuesday in a Chugach Way trailer park in Spenard. An arrest has been made in one of the slayings.

A J.C. Penney parking garage employee called police about the body there around 2:45 p.m. Thursday, police said. Several officers responded, closing the garage entrances and stranding some shoppers for hours.

The parking attendant who found the dead man described the victim as a heavyset black man in his early 20s, about 5 feet, 6 inches tall and wearing baggy clothes and a black cotton shirt.

The attendant would not give his name. He said he found the victim while making a routine security check of a garage stairwell. The victim was lying on the seventh-floor landing, he said.

The attendant initially thought the man might be a homeless person, though he said he didn't really look the part, and he went to fetch a supervisor. "I thought he was tired or sleeping," he said.

When the attendant returned, he realized the victim was dead. Three 9 mm bullet casings lay on the ground next to the body, he said. No blood was immediately visible because the victim was wearing a dark, thick cotton shirt. The attendant said the man looked like he had been shot at close range.

"He was still warm," he said.

The experience was a little scary, the attendant said. "I usually don't find dead people."

APD's Major Crime Scene Unit RV arrived on scene around 4 p.m. People driving down Sixth Avenue gawked at the assemblage of police cars, investigators and yellow crime scene tape.

Many shoppers and employees who had parked in the garage were not allowed to return to their cars until around 5 p.m. Even then, they had to walk up the ramp because the stairwells and elevators were closed for evidence collection.

Doc Brunquist was parked on the fourth floor. He went to the store to buy a blanket but got sidetracked looking at clothes. By the time he was finished, the garage had been shut down and he was stranded. "If I had just taken my blanket and split, I'd've made it out," he said.

A J.C. Penney manager asked about the shooting said he had no comment.

The garage shooting marked the 14th homicide in Anchorage in 2002 and the fourth in the past month. Lt. Ken Cole said detectives are investigating round the clock lately. "We're working our people very, very hard," he said. "Twenty-four seven. I wish we had more people."

"We're a little tired," Detective Glen Klinkhart said as he checked entrances at J.C. Penney. Just days earlier, Klinkhart and his partner were walking the perimeter of 222 Price St. in Mountain View, where Cynthia R. Barnes, 47, was found dead Monday. Nobody has been arrested in that case, nor has an arrest been made in the death of Cynthia Lorraine Henry, 36, who was found dead Sept. 24 under the A Street bridge downtown.

In this week's other slaying, Joshua J. Longley, 28, has been charged with shooting his wife, Susan Williams, in the chest while the couple's two young children were in the room. Longley said it was an accident.

There was a little lull after the rash of summer slayings, Klinkhart said. "Now it seems to be on the upswing," he said. "Things come in threes, they say."

Reach reporter Tataboline Brant at tbrant@adn.com and 907 257-4321.