Robert P. Steward, a 33-year-old Black man, was killed on the evening of August 13, 2018, inside a home on the 1000 block of East 20th Avenue in Anchorage's Fairview neighborhood. Police were called at 7:28 p.m. and found the 33-year-old male dead inside after what investigators described as a verbal altercation among family members that spiraled into domestic violence.
According to police, one adult male in the family produced a gun during the argument and shot the 33-year-old male, then fled before officers arrived.
By the following morning, detectives had obtained a warrant for second-degree murder for 47-year-old Harry J. Steward Jr., the older brother of the 33-year-old victim. Officers had been in phone contact with the suspect, who said he would surrender. At 12:28 p.m. on August 14, 2018, the 47-year-old man turned himself in at the Anchorage Jail and was taken into custody.
Local reporting the next day confirmed that Harry Steward had been arrested on the second-degree murder warrant in the death of his 33-year-old brother, and that he had walked into the jail just before 12:30 p.m. to surrender. The account noted officers initially found the 33-year-old man dead inside the East 20th Avenue residence and that multiple people were in the home when the shooting occurred.
Police described the killing as an isolated domestic incident, marking another homicide in Anchorage that year. The official case entry summarized the sequence succinctly: an argument between two brothers, a gun produced, a single home turned into a crime scene, and within a day an arrest of the 47-year-old suspect who would face a murder charge in the death of the 33-year-old man.
