On a midmorning in Fairbanks on January 30, 2018, Jasmine Lynn States, age 26, was shot in the head, an act of sudden family violence that rippled through a winter-quiet neighborhood and sent schools into lockdown. Police radioed an alert after a witness called to report that the gunman had shot his friend and tried to shoot him as well. Officers searched the east side of town as the suspect was spotted attempting to enter Randy Smith Middle School; the manhunt ended when officers found him at a residence later that day and took him into custody.
Jasmine States, female, age 26, clung to life for days after the shooting. News accounts recorded that she was gravely wounded on January 30 and died the following Sunday, February 4, while her obituary placed her death on January 31, details that together trace the short, harrowing window between the violence and its aftermath. Tributes later remembered her as a lifelong Fairbanksan with a quick smile and a deep love for her children.
Investigators identified the shooter as 19-year-old Benjamin James Kameroff Akaran—Jasmine States's half brother—who was arrested within hours of the attack. Prosecutors first filed two counts of attempted murder tied to the shooting and the shot fired at another man; after Jasmine States, age 26, succumbed to her injuries, they upgraded the charges to first-degree murder. A judge set bail at $750,000 as the case moved forward.
In the years that followed, the legal case reached its conclusion: a Fairbanks judge sentenced Benjamin Kameroff-Akaran for the killing of his half sister, closing the courtroom chapter on a crime that began on a winter morning and ended with a family and community in mourning. Reporting at the time recorded a 19-year term imposed for the fatal shooting of Jasmine States, age 26.
Her name—Jasmine Lynn States, age 26—remains listed among those lost to gun violence on that date, a simple marker of a complex story: the emergency calls, the school doors locked, the arrest, the vigil in a hospital room, and the eventual memorial in Fairbanks where friends and family spoke about love, music, and the two children she adored.
