Update, 9:45 a.m. Thursday:
Anchorage police have named the two people found dead near Davis Park early Tuesday in a double homicide.
According to an updated police statement Wednesday, the families of Carl Nielsen Jr., 44, and Sara Cummings, 34, have been notified of their deaths.
No other information in the case, which police are investigating as a double shooting, has yet been released.
Original story:
Anchorage police are investigating a double homicide Tuesday near a Mountain View park, in an area that has seen a contentious homeless camp cleared as well as two fatal shootings earlier this year.
Police said in a statement that officers were dispatched to the Davis Park area at about 3:15 a.m. Tuesday, in response to a report of a man and a woman found dead outside from “apparent gunshot wounds.”
No arrests had been made by Tuesday afternoon.
Police Chief Sean Case said officers were still interviewing witnesses. He said the initial 911 caller reported hearing gunshots near the park, crossed Mountain View Drive to investigate and saw the bodies in an area used as a winter snow dump.
“We know that at least one of the victims, we have on video just moments before the incident happened, walking across the street pushing a cart, so there wasn't a camp that they were going to,” Case said. “There were no encampments in the snow dump area, so the two presumably have entered the park or the snow dump area, very (close in) proximity to when the incident took place.”
Case declined to discuss further details about the scene, the victims or any potential suspects, pending further investigation and notification of the victims’ families.
For years, the Davis Park area was home to the city’s largest homeless encampments. At one time, an estimated 100 to 200 people lived in the park or the nearby snow dump. The area also saw two fatal shootings earlier this year, one in February that killed Kikite Leu Fatu and one in April that killed Haily Ibarra. The city cleared the encampments in June.
Phil Cannon, president of the Mountain View Community Council, frequently did outreach in the camps. He said he did not have any information Tuesday about the deaths.
Cannon said that, overall, since June, he has not seen campers return to the park, but people have started using it recreationally again, including for disc golf.
“The police have done a lot,” Cannon said. “I think they've just been very consistently going back and walking through the woods and kind of making sure that people aren't re-setting things back up.”
Some of the people displaced from the camp are still in Mountain View, Cannon said, at various sites including the nearby Lions Park. While some “shadier activities” still take place in the area, he said, he hadn’t heard of any taking place at Davis Park.
Police are asking anyone with information about the deaths or surveillance video from the area to call them at 311. Tips can also be submitted anonymously online through Anchorage Crime Stoppers.
