Black/African American. Nineteen-year-old Juanita Raquel Lolesio, a female from Anchorage, was celebrating with friends on a party bus in the early hours of December 30, 2017, when gunfire erupted as the bus stopped near the 100 block of Oklahoma Street, close to Boundary Avenue. Police responding at 2:59 a.m. found multiple shell casings in the street; about fifteen minutes later, she arrived at a local hospital with life-threatening wounds, accompanied by witnesses who had been on the bus.
She remained on life support for 17 days and died on January 15, 2018 at Alaska Regional Hospital. Her obituary later confirmed her age and the date of her passing.
Detectives pieced together what happened: more than a dozen rounds had been fired into a party bus carrying at least sixteen people during a birthday celebration. The investigation connected the ambush to a separate shooting three days earlier, when shots were fired into a vehicle and occupied residences on Stella Place. The Oklahoma Street case, opened as a shots-fired call, was elevated to a homicide the day Juanita Raquel Lolesio died.
On February 10, 2018, homicide detectives and the Investigative Support Unit executed a search warrant at a residence on East 20th Avenue. Two suspects—a 19-year-old man and a juvenile male—were taken into custody for questioning and then arrested. The adult was identified as Christopher Espiritu-Simpson; he was booked on charges that included second-degree murder and multiple counts of misconduct involving weapons, with charges pending against the juvenile.
Years later, the courtroom story completed the arc of the investigation. In August 2023, Christopher Espiritu-Simpson pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for the party-bus attack and to second-degree weapons misconduct for the Stella Place shooting. In December 2023, a judge found his conduct “especially aggravated,” noting the gang-motivated nature of the ambush and the terror inflicted on the many riders, including Juanita's younger sister. He was sentenced to 60 years with 25 years suspended for the murder and two additional years to serve for the weapons misconduct, followed by a decade of felony probation.
