A man involved in a standoff with Anchorage police surrendered early Thursday, ending an hourslong standoff without injuries after a domestic dispute in which police say he choked his girlfriend's cats.
Both of the cats survived, police spokeswoman Renee Oistad said Thursday afternoon. The suspect, 28-year-old James Roy Nanalook, was ultimately held at the Anchorage Correctional Complex on charges of kidnapping, animal cruelty and violating his probation.
Dispatchers first received word at about 1:15 a.m. that Nanalook had a knife, wasn't letting his girlfriend leave and had threatened to commit "suicide by cop" at a home on the 1500 block of Karluk Street.
"It was further relayed that (Nanalook) did not live in the home and that he had strangled the woman's two cats," Oistad wrote in a statement on the incident.
Police, including the department's SWAT team, responded and set up a perimeter around the residence.
Oistad said the woman, who was able to leave the home at about 2:45 a.m., told police that she and Nanalook had been drinking, but got into an argument over drug packaging she thought she had found in his clothing. During the dispute, the woman said, Nanalook had held a knife to his throat and voiced suicidal threats, but didn't threaten her.
Police negotiators spoke at length with Nanalook, who Oistad said wouldn't follow officers' commands and threatened to blow up the home by using its natural gas lines. Gas to the home was shut down, and Nanalook stepped outside with a knife to his throat shortly before 6 a.m.; he dropped the blade and surrendered a few minutes later, police said.