Police in Anchorage have taken a man into custody after an early morning shooting in a residential area near downtown left one person dead. It’s the city’s 26th homicide so far this year, the same number as happened in all of 2015, and just a few blocks away from the site of a recent high-profile double homicide.
Police said they first heard reports of a shooting just after 6:16 a.m., and arrived to find a deceased male at the intersection of 15th Avenue and E Street. In a series of releases sent out to the public, the department said they were trying to find 31-year-old Tommy Rumph, who was seen fleeing the scene on foot.
A public video was posted to Tommy Rumph’s Facebook page not long after the shooting occurred. It shows a distraught man, presumably him, walking through the dark, alluding to violence and being “done for life” after someone “disturbed his home.”
“I feel like I let everyone down,” says the man in the video.
He goes on to say he feels guilt, apologizes to family members, and says he’s enjoying his last moments of freedom for having “bodied” another man.
According to the APD, Rumph surrendered to police about two hours after the incident was first reported and was being questioned at department headquarters. According to court records, Rumph pleaded guilty to felony assault charges in 2013.
The very public and dramatic video posted to Facebook has drawn tens of thousands of views by Tuesday afternoon, and eliciting hundreds of comments, many of them explicitly racist.
In public photos, Rumph bragged about his grey and white pitbull. The same dog was in the fenced in yard beside a yellow stucco house at 506 W. 15th Avenue later in the day, where a police crime lab was set up in the driveway. An officer at the scene said the dog belonged to the unit’s resident. The building is a duplex, but no one responded to repeated knocks at the door to the adjoining apartment.
The property is across an intersection from Central Middle School and Chugach Option, both of which were immediately closed once reports of a shooting came in.
School district spokesperson Heidi Embley said the decision to close both schools came after close and rapid consultation with the police department as information began coming in.
“We continued to stay in contact with the police throughout the morning until they had the suspect apprehended,” Embley said.
A handful of students and staff were already at the two schools when police put up a perimeter around the intersection and closed the streets to traffic.
Embley said all students were diverted to a nearby high school for pickup.
“There are no buses that go to Chugach Optional, but for Central Middle School we sent all the buses out on their normal bus routes to pick up students who may not have received information about school being closed,” Embley said. “In total there were about 20 students who were transported over to West High.”
Both schools stayed closed for the remainder of the day, but will be open Wendesday.
The incident happened just a few blocks from a recent double homicide in Valley of the Moon Park, where last week more than a hundred residents gathered to question the mayor and city officials on crime in the area.
Later on Tuesday evening, police announced they will charge Rumph with murder, as well misconduct involving a weapon, and misconduct involving a controlled substance.
Authorities identified the victim as 30-year-old Teavonne Owens, and say the two men knew each other and had an altercation prior to shots being fired.
Zachariah Hughes reports on city & state politics, arts & culture, drugs, and military affairs in Anchorage and South Central Alaska.
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