Black/African American male Sentwali Howard, age 30, died in Anchorage, Alaska, on February 15, 2015. In the cold hours around 3:00 a.m., he and an acquaintance, 33-year-old Terrance Jermaine Beasley, walked into the Holiday convenience store near Old Seward Highway and Tudor Road. A brief argument over a perceived slight flared inside the store, then the two men stepped back out and headed south on foot.
Moments after they crossed Tudor Road, witnesses saw Beasley draw a handgun and fire multiple rounds. Officers soon found the 30-year-old male victim down on the west side of 822 E. 45th Avenue with gunshot wounds to the chest and stomach; he was rushed to a nearby hospital and pronounced dead around 6:00 a.m. that morning.
The police response swept quickly across several midtown blocks. A K-9 track led investigators from the shooting scene to the Parkwood Inn on Juneau Street, where officers encountered Beasley as he exited an apartment and, after other occupants were ushered out, briefly staged a SWAT negotiation with one person who remained inside. That standoff ended peacefully. By the following night, after interviews with multiple witnesses, detectives booked Beasley on charges of second-degree murder and third-degree weapons misconduct as a felon in possession, and transferred him to the Anchorage Jail for arraignment.
Public memorial notices later fixed the personal contours of the loss: the 30-year-old male, born in Alaska on April 24, 1984, was remembered by family and friends at services held at Shiloh Baptist Church, with burial at Anchorage Memorial Park Cemetery. Listings that honor people lost to gun violence in the city record his death on February 15, 2015.
As of the immediate aftermath documented by police, there was a clear suspect and an arrest: Terrance Jermaine Beasley, age 33, identified by witnesses as the shooter, tracked by a police dog to the Parkwood Inn, detained following a short standoff, and charged the next day with murder and weapons misconduct. Subsequent court outcomes were not detailed in the initial public bulletins, but the arrest and charging information are a matter of record in those contemporaneous accounts.
