On April 9, 2023, in Fairbanks, Alaska, 35-year-old male Lawrence “Scott” McMullen was shot outside the Alaska Motel on South Cushman Street shortly after 7 p.m. Officers arrived to find the 35-year-old male unresponsive with multiple gunshot wounds; he was transported to Fairbanks Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. An autopsy later determined he had been shot four times in the back and once in the inner right thigh. Ethnicity: not publicly reported.
In the immediate aftermath, Fairbanks police opened a homicide investigation centered on the motel's parking lot and surrounding corridor, gathering witness accounts and canvassing for surveillance footage. Community memorial pages marked the death of the 35-year-old male and fixed the date and location, while early incident logs noted the South Cushman address associated with the shooting.
Detectives built the case over months with video evidence from multiple locations, DNA analysis on spent casings processed by an outside laboratory, and ballistics testing at the state crime lab. Their work ultimately identified a suspect: 28-year-old Fairbanks resident Christopher Oktollik. He was later tried for the killing of the 35-year-old male, with testimony and forensic findings anchoring the state's theory of an ambush-style shooting in the motel lot.
On July 15, 2025, a Fairbanks jury found Christopher Oktollik guilty of murder in the first degree for the April 9, 2023 shooting death of 35-year-old male Lawrence “Scott” McMullen outside the Alaska Motel. Following the verdict, Oktollik was held without bail by the Department of Corrections pending sentencing, which was scheduled for October 20, 2025. The conviction confirmed that the investigation's sole named suspect was responsible for the killing.
