Christopher Fulton, a 22-year-old male from Anchorage, Alaska, was shot and killed on September 4, 2014, inside an apartment at the Russian Jack complex on Reka Street. Police were called just after 2 p.m., arriving within minutes to find him mortally wounded from a gunshot to the head; medics pronounced him dead shortly thereafter. Accounts gathered by investigators described an argument in the apartment that escalated into a struggle, with at least four people present and all acquainted with
one another.
Investigators focused on Jerel Williams, 26, and his girlfriend, Samantha Herbert, 23, who had come to Fulton's apartment that afternoon. According to testimony later recounted in court records, Williams entered with a handgun while Herbert rifled through valuables; during a fight for the gun, a single shot rang out and the 22-year-old male collapsed. Williams and Herbert fled, abandoning a van near Eklutna Lake Road and hitchhiking to Wasilla. They were contacted by Wasilla police, interviewed by Anchorage detectives, and arrested on September 6, 2014. Early reports noted robbery as a motive, and charging documents described stolen phones and cash.
The arrests were followed by murder charges: Williams initially faced first-degree murder, first-degree robbery, and two counts of second-degree murder in the death of the 22-year-old male, while Herbert was charged with second-degree murder. Court records later showed that Herbert admitted to a lesser homicide offense for her role during the robbery, while Williams proceeded to trial. In September 2016, a jury convicted Williams of second-degree murder and first-degree robbery, and in February 2017 a judge imposed a composite 65-year sentence to serve. On appeal, the Alaska Court of Appeals affirmed his convictions and sentence, directing only a technical correction so the judgment reflected a single second-degree murder conviction.
In the official narrative that emerged, the 22-year-old male's killing was bound up with a botched robbery inside a small apartment on a late-summer afternoon, the sudden crack of a gunshot ending the struggle, and a hurried flight north of town that failed to shake the trail. The case closed with a conviction, a long sentence, and a record that preserved how a brief visit among acquaintances in East Anchorage ended in the death of a 22-year-old male.
