On July 4, 2016, a holiday barbecue at a trailer home on the 4000 block of Lore Road in Anchorage turned fatal for Hispanic/Latino, male Jorge Rea-Villa, a 30-year-old man. As friends prepared to head out later that evening, Rea-Villa stepped into a bathroom to fix his hair. Moments later, witnesses heard a volley of gunfire. Trayvon Leon Artis Morrissette, then 32 and acquainted with Rea-Villa, emerged from the bathroom after shooting the 30-year-old male nine times with a 9mm handgun.
Officers arrived around 7:45 p.m.; the 30-year-old male was found inside the home with multiple gunshot wounds and was declared dead at the scene. A clear motive was not immediately known.
The suspect fled in a tan sedan, triggering a fast-moving manhunt across South Anchorage. Over the next hours, police fielded reports of break-ins and attempted break-ins linked to the fleeing gunman. Morrissette slipped into a secured parking garage and nearby apartment buildings, at points barricading himself and changing clothes before disappearing again. With tips from residents and help from a K-9 team, officers found him hiding in a stairwell off Foxridge Way and took him into custody at about 10:22 p.m. He was booked on charges including first-degree murder and burglary; witnesses at the gathering told police the two men knew each other but could not explain why the shooting happened.
What followed was a steady march through the courts. A jury needed less than a day in May 2018 to convict Morrissette of first-degree murder in the death of the 30-year-old male on July 4, 2016. That autumn, Superior Court Judge Catherine Easter imposed a composite 99-year term: 95 years to serve for the murder and four consecutive years for first-degree burglary tied to the post-shooting flight. The sentence underscored how jurors and the court viewed the cascade of choices that began in that bathroom and spilled across Anchorage before the arrest.
On appeal, Morrissette argued that a methamphetamine-induced psychosis left him unable to form intent, and he challenged aspects of the burglary instruction and the severity of his sentence. In February 2023, the Alaska Court of Appeals affirmed the convictions and sentence, recounting testimony that the 30-year-old male was shot nine times, including a fatal head wound, and describing the suspect's deliberate actions during his flight—following a car into a secured garage, attempting to steal a vehicle, changing clothes, and evading police—conduct the court found inconsistent with his defense. With that ruling, the case against the shooter in the death of the 30-year-old male reached a somber conclusion in the record of Alaska's courts.
