Anchorage police say a homelessness advocate with a checkered past, who once accidentally floated from Alaska to Russia, was shot to death by a fast-food worker early Thursday.
The suspected shooter, 32-year-old Ryan Dummler, faces charges of first-degree and second-degree murder, police said in a statement. The West Dimond Boulevard shooting’s victim was identified Friday afternoon as 51-year-old John Martin III.
According to the charges, police found Martin dead at about 5:15 a.m. Thursday, in the Global Credit Union parking lot on the northwest corner of West Dimond and King Street. He had suffered multiple gunshot wounds, with several bullets and 9mm shell casings found at the scene.
Surveillance video from cameras in the area showed Martin lying down with a tarp and bag, as Dummler approached from the north. Dummler “pulled something off of” Martin just before Martin sat up, the charges say. It was then that Dummler appeared to shoot Martin.
Additional surveillance video showed Dummler heading to the Burger King a few blocks east along Dimond Boulevard. A manager confirmed to detectives that Dummler worked there, and he was arrested at the restaurant Thursday afternoon.
Dummler said he had “an item of self-defense” in his backpack, police said, but otherwise refused to speak with investigators. After obtaining a search warrant for his backpack, police found a 9mm Glock handgun with two partial ammunition magazines inside.
Police spokeswoman Sunny Guerin confirmed Friday that Martin was the same man who made national news in 2018 when he crossed the Bering Sea in a dinghy, sailing from Emmonak with minimal food supplies. Russian officials detained him as he tried to reach China.
More than a decade ago, Martin protested Anchorage’s homelessness policies by sitting outside City Hall in 2011. Then-mayor Dan Sullivan responded by proposing a “sidewalk ordinance” banning people from sitting or lying on downtown sidewalks, which the Assembly rejected.
Martin had also served eight years in prison for sexual abuse of a foster child in his care, according to the Associated Press. He was tried twice for manslaughter in a 2014 Seward Highway rollover crash that killed his girlfriend, after prosecutors accused him of driving drunk, but both juries failed to reach a verdict.
Dummler was held at the Anchorage Correctional Complex, where he remained in custody Friday.
Police credited people and businesses in the vicinity of the shooting with “providing information to dispatch and homicide detectives that led to solving this crime swiftly.”
Chris Klint is a web producer and breaking news reporter at Alaska Public Media. Reach him at cklint@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Chris here.
