White/Caucasian male Michael Irby Pinkston, 60, died in the early hours of December 8, 2015, after a shooting inside an apartment on the 3200 block of East 41st Avenue in Anchorage. Officers arrived just before 2 a.m. to find the 60-year-old with a single gunshot wound to the abdomen; he was rushed to a local hospital and pronounced dead about a half-hour later.
Police detained a suspect at the scene and, the following day, named and charged 71-year-old Rita Pinkston in the fatal shooting of her 60-year-old husband. Investigators said the round was fired inside the home, striking him in the stomach. The case began as a homicide investigation and advanced quickly, with the arrest announced on December 9, 2015.
Charging documents described a bitter argument that spiraled in the moments before the gunshot. According to those filings, Rita Pinkston called 911 and told dispatchers she had shot Michael because she was “tired of his s—,” and later told detectives the pair had been divorced “decades” earlier but were still living together because he served as her caretaker. She said she picked up a. 40-caliber handgun kept beside her bed and fired once, adding that she had wanted to shoot him in the spine, and that she had “snapped.”
The criminal case shifted course more than two years later. On January 4, 2018, Rita Pinkston—then 73—pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the shooting death of her ex-husband, having originally been charged with murder. In entering the plea, she admitted to responding officers that she had shot him with a. 40-caliber handgun after an argument in the East Anchorage home. A sentencing hearing was set for May 17.
Public records and memorial notices identify the deceased by name and confirm his age and date of death in Anchorage, consistent with the police account of events.
