The alleged shooter of John Kavairlook Jr. has been arrested by Fairbanks police.
Kavairlook was gunned down outside of the Rock N Rodeo Bar in Fairbanks last May.
The alleged shooter is Patrick Dale Burton, age 23. He was located in Cleveland, Ohio and is currently in custody awaiting possible extradition to Alaska on charges of first degree murder.
Fairbanks Police Detective Peyton Merideth said that, unlike the previous two out-of-state arrests in connection to the Kavairlook homicide, when U.S. Marshals and local police conducted the arrests, Fairbanks police picked up Burton themselves this time.
“We didn’t require the assistance of anybody else except the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Office,” Meredith said. “We had discovered his whereabouts, and were down there. We traveled down to speak with him and serve an arrest warrant.”
On May 16th of last year, Kavairlook took his wife Shalene (shay-LEEN) to the Rock N Rodeo on the Old Steese Highway in Fairbanks for their first night out after the birth of their daughter roughly a month earlier. Burton was also at the bar with a group of three other men.
Charging documents suggest that Kavairlook tried to defend his wife from an unwelcome advance by one of the four suspects. A fight broke out in the bar, and the men were ejected.
As the altercation continued in the parking lot, Burton allegedly retrieved a 9 millimeter handgun from a vehicle and shot Kavairlook multiple times.
Detective Merideth said that the investigation into Kavairlook’s death has been extensive and exhausting, stemming from the fact that the suspects were not from Fairbanks.
“Just like the other suspects in the case, it was just a matter of, literally, thousands of hours put in by our office to try to track these guys down, Meredith said. “And we were finally able to identify who the actual shooter was, which of course was on video. But we just needed to put a name with a face.”
Two of Burton’s companions at the Rock N Rodeo were arrested last fall. Joel Roland Joseph and Demarius Hinson are in custody at the Fairbanks Correctional Center. A hearing on their cases is scheduled for this June 30 in Fairbanks Superior Court, with a trial date currently set for the week of August 15th.
Joseph is charged with first and second degree murder, and has pled not guilty. Hinson and Joseph are also charged with hindering prosecution. Both fled the state after the incident.
John Kavairlook was a 2010 graduate of the Galena Interior Learning Academy, and originally from the village of Koyuk. He was working as a plumber in Fairbanks at the time of his death.
