Michael White, a 40-year-old male, died on April 15, 2019, in Seward, Alaska, after being shot inside a van during a confrontation on Nash Road. Alaska State Troopers were dispatched at approximately 6:06 p.m. and found Michael White, 40, and Dustin Marx, 28, both of Seward, deceased from gunshot wounds. The man who called authorities, Joseph Chandler Jr., told troopers the two had driven a van onto his property and refused to leave, and that an argument escalated before the shooting.
Early reports noted that Chandler said he fired inside the van after feeling threatened.
Troopers arrested Joseph Chandler Jr., then 30, on two counts of first-degree murder the following day. He was held without bail while the investigation proceeded, with initial summaries repeating Chandler's account that he believed the men threatened him, though no weapons were recovered from the van according to later court documents. The basic facts remained consistent in early coverage: two victims, including Michael White, 40, shot inside a vehicle on Chandler's property after a dispute about leaving the area.
Years of court proceedings followed. A mistrial was declared after one jury deadlocked, and subsequent attempts to seat a jury stretched the case into 2023. In December 2023, a Kenai jury acquitted Chandler of all charges related to the deaths of Michael White, 40, and Dustin Marx, 28. Coverage of the verdict recapped the state's theory of intentional killings and the defense claim of self-defense on Chandler's property, as well as the detail—drawn from trooper reports—that the shooting occurred inside the victims' van. Chandler, who had remained in custody through the trials, was released after the not-guilty verdicts.
Michael White's death was documented by regional outlets and memorialized in national gun-violence records, which list him as a 40-year-old killed by gunfire in Seward on April 15, 2019. The public narrative that emerges from those reports is stark: a property-line encounter on an early spring evening; a van idling where it should not have been; words exchanged and tempers raised; and a call to troopers from the shooter himself, followed by arrest, years of litigation, and finally an acquittal that closed the case without a conviction for the killings of Michael White, 40, and Dustin Marx, 28.
