Black/African American male Jerry R. Sales, age 42, was shot late on the morning of December 16, 2019, outside the Holiday gas station at 4627 Mountain View Drive in Anchorage. Officers responding around 10:12 a.m. found the 42-year-old man with life-threatening gunshot wounds; despite attempts to save him, the 42-year-old male died at the scene. Investigators said the violence appeared to follow some kind of altercation in the station's parking area, and they shut down a stretch of Mountain
View Drive while seeking witnesses and video.
As word spread through the neighborhood, family and friends gathered the next evening at the same Mountain View corner for a candlelight vigil in his memory. They spoke about the 42-year-old man as a father and brother, standing amid glow sticks and hand-lettered signs while police publicly urged anyone with information to come forward. The vigil underscored the human cost of the shooting even as detectives moved quickly to identify a suspect.
By the night of December 17, police named 43-year-old Tierre Eady as the suspect and obtained a warrant for his arrest on counts of first- and second-degree murder. Officials cautioned the public that he was considered armed and dangerous and asked for tips to locate him. Two days later, on January 17, 2020, officers from the Investigative Support Unit conducted a traffic stop near Price and Thompson; Eady, riding as a passenger, was taken into custody and remanded on the outstanding warrant for one count of Murder in the First Degree and two counts of Murder in the Second Degree.
The killing of the 42-year-old man came during a grim stretch for the city; it marked one of Anchorage's final homicides of 2019, a year that saw more than thirty people slain. In the days after the shooting, local coverage emphasized both the search for the suspect and the city's rising toll, while police records preserved the basic facts: a fatal encounter at a neighborhood gas station, a swift identification of a suspect, and an arrest just over a month later.
