A refugee bet on a rough Anchorage neighborhood by opening a laundromat. Then came a fight and a gunshot that changed lives.

It started with a man draped in a hospital blanket. He walked into a laundromat in Anchorage’s Fairview neighborhood and wouldn’t leave.

An argument between the owner of the business and the man spilled into the parking lot.

There was a scuffle, a gunshot, and a bystander on the ground seriously wounded.

Now, a year after the encounter, City Laundromat’s 41-year-old owner, Fue Yang, faces felony criminal charges and stands to lose his businesses and his home.

In an unusual move, Yang has appealed publicly to the Fairview Community Council for support.

Yang’s laundromat is at the site of the Gambell Street property that formerly housed Spirits of Alaska, a liquor store so notorious that the neighborhood once staged a protest to have it shut down.

In a proposed resolution brought before the council, Yang says his investment in Gambell Street and the difficulty of doing business in a neighborhood that has “experienced elevated amounts of vagrancy” should be considered by members.

The criminal case has become about something more than a parking lot fight that turned violent: Yang’s cause has found support among some people along Gambell Street who say business owners have long borne the brunt of public intoxication, homelessness and drug use in the area.

Yang, they say, seems to have been defending himself.

“The way I look at it, it was an accident,” said Fairview Community Council president Allen Kemplen, speaking for himself and not the council as a whole. “To see someone whose entire livelihood could be affected by the environment that exists in that location — I think it would be a great injustice.“

“The lives of two decent people have been dramatically altered,” he said.

The bystander who was shot has a very different perspective. Christopher Christian says his life was permanently altered by the encounter.

“A bullet penetrates your body. It explodes. Shrapnel is in your body. It does all kind of damage to you,” said 27-year-old Christian. “But what’s in your head is the hardest.”

‘Why I have a gun’

Fue Yang was born in Laos and spent some of his early years in Thai refugee camps with other Hmong people in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.

As a child, he moved to the United States with his single mother and siblings. They settled in Oroville, in Northern California. Yang eventually earned two college degrees and started a family.

In 2001, he moved to Anchorage to work in his brother’s small grocery store, which flourished.

He later opened an in-home health aide company, U-Care Services, that he says employed over 100 people.

Yang and his wife had seven daughters, bought a nice house in East Anchorage, and he became an elder in his church.

A few years ago, Yang decided his next business would be in Fairview.

The building at the corner of 12th Avenue and Gambell Street had a fraught history: Fairview neighbors and businesses had long viewed Spirits of Alaska as the core of a sphere of public inebriation and lawless activity.

After years of problems, the Fairview Community Council got involved, pushing for the store to be shut down.

By early 2015, Spirits of Alaska was so unpopular that neighborhood residents held a protest outside the store, chanting and carrying signs bearing slogans like “STOP SUPPORTING ADDICTION.”

Anchorage police compiled a video pulled from surveillance footage that showed people drinking in the parking lot, apparent drug deals, assaults, public defecation and a person smoking crack, and showed it to Anchorage Assembly members, according to a Daily News report from the time.

The embattled store closed after the Alaska Alcoholic Beverage Control Board voted against renewing its license to sell alcohol.

The store left behind a maroon and gray building, which Yang decided to turn into a laundromat.

Yang says he invested $1.2 million, through bank loans, to buy and renovate the property.

He carved out space for a barber shop and made plans for a takeout food service area. He envisioned his customers coming to wash their clothes, get a fresh haircut and have a plate of noodles all in one place. City Laundromat opened in 2018.

Business was good, Yang said.

Other people doing business in the neighborhood say they were happy about the change. Fairview needed a laundromat, said Sylvia Beers, a bartender at Barry’s Baranof Lounge, a bar across the street.

“It’s a way better clientele over there now,” she said.

But Yang said he struggled with balancing customers and disturbances on Gambell Street.

Homeless people would often wander into his business, asking for a place to warm up from the cold. Some were disruptive, hitting machines or bothering paying customers.

“Some people come in, they just need a little rest. I will let them do that. But just for a couple minutes,” he said. “You can’t be there all the time.”

His concerns about safety in the area led him to keep a handgun — not an uncommon practice on a street where the gas station clerk keeps a sidearm on his belt.

“Because of the fear in that area, that’s why I have a gun,” Yang said. “But I didn’t plan to use it.”

Yang didn’t have to look far to find an example of an attack on a store owner: Right across the street, at Cecey’s Pizza, owner Eric Ambris had been shot in a robbery in 2013.

Back then the restaurant was known as Capone’s Pizza.

Ambris remembers the day vividly: He was alone in the small restaurant, which mostly does its business in takeout and delivery orders. A man burst through the front door and shot him twice in the stomach and leg before fleeing with the tip jar, which contained $5.

Ambris was shot in an artery in his leg and would have bled to death if not for a bartender from Barry’s Baranof Lounge who rushed next door and used his belt as a tourniquet.

He spent a month in a coma and another month in the hospital recovering. The shooter was never caught.

A fight in the parking lot

Then came Saturday, Nov. 24, 2018. Late that afternoon, a man walked into the City Laundromat draped in a blanket.

He was familiar: Yang said the man identified in court documents as Tell Wohltmann was known for causing trouble at businesses up and down Gambell Street.

Wohltmann’s court record includes violations for trespassing, resisting arrest and obstructing traffic around that time. Records suggest he’d also recently been evicted.

Wohltmann wanted to hang out inside the laundromat without doing any laundry, Yang said.

Christopher Christian was also in the City Laundromat, doing a load of washing with his girlfriend and daughter in tow.

He recognized the blanket draped over Wohltmann’s shoulders as a hospital blanket, because he worked in an Anchorage hospital as a security guard at the time.

What happened next is still the subject of an unresolved criminal case.

The initial version in the charging documents filed by prosecutors goes like this: Yang asked Wohltmann to leave.

The man said no. A door was slammed. Yang brought out his gun, and a fight began in the parking lot at the edge of Gambell Street.

Christian ran out to intervene. He said his instinct was to"de-escalate" the scuffle -- as he had been trained to do for his work as a security guard.

“I thought in my head, ‘Let me for once try to do something good,’ ” he said.

Christian remembers saying something like “Let’s be adults here” as he approached the men.

The gun went off. Christian was shot in the stomach.

“I see blood pouring down from my stomach,” Christian said. “Pouring on my clothes. I’m thinking, ‘I can’t believe this is actually it.’ ”

Believing you will die in a laundromat parking lot is a “surreal feeling,” Christian said.

He remembers he lay on the ground and tried to quell his panic.

“The cement was cold. I’m looking up at the sky. I think, OK, this is bad, I’m bleeding out, I have to stay awake. I’m going to die here,” he said.

‘I was just protecting my life’

An ambulance arrived and whisked Christian to a hospital for surgery.

The bullet tore into Christian’s intestines and bladder, exiting near his rectum. He spent a week in the hospital and three months off work.

Yang left his parking lot in handcuffs.

He told detectives the gun accidentally went off, according to the charging documents.

He said he was scared for his life, and for his 1-year-old daughter, who had been asleep inside the laundromat.

After the shooting, Yang was charged with four counts of felony assault.

The state suspended his license to operate his home health care business, the source of most of his income. That business has closed.

Yang now says he’s close to losing the laundromat, and his home.

A few weeks ago, Yang’s wife gave birth to their eighth child — the boy Yang had been praying for.

On a recent Tuesday afternoon, he sat on a couch holding his newborn son. One of his daughters napped on the couch as cartoons played in the background.

Yang is on ankle monitoring. He is hoping that the charges against him will be dismissed or dropped to a misdemeanor. He feels that he didn’t do anything illegal.

“I was just protecting my life," he said. “I think the community will agree with that.”

If he becomes a felon, Yang says, he will no longer be able to fully participate in community life as a businessman, or provide for his family.

“I worked too hard for my life" to lose it all, he said.

Christian said he’s still living the effects of the bullet’s damage: His stomach is disfigured. He has nerve damage in his bladder. At his security job, wearing a bulletproof vest caused him excruciating pain.

He has struggled with loud noises and being in crowds.

“I recognize I could probably use some counseling,” he said.

Christian thinks the charges filed against Yang represent an appropriate punishment for the shooting.

“What he did could have been avoided,” he said. “I think he let his ego get the best of him.”

He says that Yang seemed angry, and that he should have hired professional security if he was having problems doing business on Gambell Street.

“Business owner or not, you do the crime, you’ve got to do the time. I can’t go around and shoot someone purposely or accidentally and expect any less,” he said. “It doesn’t happen like that.”

‘A moment of truth coming up’

The Fairview Community Council will vote on the resolution Dec. 12.

“Mr. Fue T. Yang has demonstrated a willingness to take on business risk and invest in our community,” the proposed resolution reads. “We purchased and renovated a problem property, creating a neighborhood-based laundromat, and reduced some of the problems associated with the prior business at that location.”

“Therefore, the (community council) strongly supports Mr. Yang and his desire to continue to contribute to Fairview through his business endeavors.”

Yang’s friend Hugh Wade, a local real estate broker, came up with the idea to seek public support. He sees Yang as “the ultimate underdog.”

It’s hard to read what the council will do, he said.

"We’ll have a moment of truth coming up.”

If the council votes in support, it’s not clear what kind of influence that might have on negotiations in the case -- if any at all.

District attorney Arne Soelwedel could not be reached for comment.

Meanwhile, life goes on along Gambell Street. City Laundromat is still open.

Christian said he doesn’t relish returning to the street, but he doesn’t exactly avoid the area.

Yang still works at his laundromat, but only certain hours while he’s on ankle monitoring. He says his next big project will be getting the takeout food counter he planned running.