White/Caucasian male, age 41, James Lucas Moren stepped out into the cold darkness just after bar break on December 24, 2016, slipping into the alley behind the Gaslight Bar in downtown Anchorage. It was about 3 a.m. when he left the Fourth Avenue crowd; police later said cameras had tracked him inside the bar, with another man shadowing his exit into the narrow lot. Moments later, shots cut the quiet. Officers on foot patrol heard the gunfire and converged on the alley.
There, according to investigators, they found the aftermath of a close pursuit, a pickup truck poised for flight, and a handgun believed to be the weapon that had just been fired. The victim was identified as James Moren, 41.
By sunrise, the outline of the night hardened into names and charges. Detectives said surveillance video showed two men working in concert: David Dennis, 36, and Roy Schauer, 46. Police alleged Dennis drove to the rear lot and supplied a firearm; Schauer, who had followed Moren from the bar, was accused of firing multiple rounds in the alley. Foot patrol officers stopped Schauer as he tried to leave and recovered a. 45-caliber Glock from the truck near the driver's side. Both men were arrested and booked, each charged with murder in the first and second degrees, and were arraigned by the end of the holiday weekend.
The case marked yet another grim tally in a record year for Anchorage homicides and drew a brisk, visible response downtown: intersections were cordoned between Third and Fourth, G and H Streets while crime-scene technicians worked through the morning. In public summaries released that day, authorities reiterated the timeline—3:10 a.m. in the 700 block of West Fourth Avenue, alley behind the Gaslight—naming Moren and the two suspects and stating the charges. Subsequent listings in national gun-violence databases recorded Schauer's arrest status in connection with the killing.
In the weeks that followed, obituaries and memorial pages filled in gentler details about the 41-year-old who had grown up around Anchorage and kept ties to downtown. Friends and family used those spaces to grieve the sudden, violent end to a Christmas Eve that had begun like countless others on Fourth Avenue. The formal record, meanwhile, remained fixed on the essentials: the hour, the alley, the arrests, and the two men prosecutors accused of taking his life.
