Charles Gustav Steinhilpert III, an 18-year-old Alaska Native male Naltsiin Athabascan from Anchorage, Alaska, died on January 25, 2015. That Sunday night at about 8:39 p.m., the 18-year-old male met in the Walgreens parking lot at Lake Otis Parkway and Tudor Road for what police described as a drug transaction. An altercation broke out between the 18-year-old male and a 14-year-old male; the younger boy produced a gun and fired a single shot into the vehicle where the victim sat.
Friends rushed the 18-year-old male to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead roughly twenty minutes later; it was Anchorage's first homicide of 2015.
In the immediate aftermath, detectives detained the 14-year-old male and referred him to the Division of Juvenile Justice. The next day, police publicly identified the 18-year-old male victim as Charles Gustav Steinhilpert III and reiterated that the killing stemmed from a drug deal in the Midtown lot by Tudor and Lake Otis.
As the investigation widened, arrests reached beyond the juvenile. On February 7, police arrested 18-year-old Keiara Reynaud and charged him with second-degree murder and first-degree robbery in connection with the robbery and fatal shooting of the 18-year-old male at the Walgreens lot. The following day, investigators charged 19-year-old Makur Chan with two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of first-degree robbery for a pair of drug-related homicides—one of them the fatal shooting of Charles Gustav Steinhilpert III—with police stating there was intent to rob in both cases. The department emphasized that the investigations were ongoing at that time.
Away from the crime scene, the 18-year-old male was remembered by family and friends as bright and kind. Born July 24, 1996, he graduated from South Anchorage High School in May 2014, competed in Native Youth Olympics with the Alaska Native Heritage Center's team, served as a JROTC cadet all four years of high school, and volunteered regularly. He is survived by his parents, Charles G. Steinhilpert Jr. and Ada M. Chapman, his younger brother Cameron J. Steinhilpert, and his sisters Athena L. Steinhilpert and Amber M. Steinhilpert. A funeral service was held January 31, 2015, at Anchorage City Church.
