A man was arrested last week at 7 Mile Mud Bay Road after a months-long dispute over property ownership escalated into a violent altercation Nov. 29, according to Haines Borough police and court documents.

The victim allegedly lost consciousness, showed symptoms of a heart attack and had to be medevacked to Anchorage, police said.

The suspect was charged with felony assault and three misdemeanors, including fourth-degree assault and trespassing. He is being held at Lemon Creek Correctional Center in Juneau awaiting trial.

A witness — the victim’s nephew — said the suspect “jumped on top” of the victim and repeatedly struck him in the head with a cordless Dewalt drill, according to a criminal complaint and report written by Haines Police officer Michael Fullerton.

The victim’s nephew told police he confronted the suspect, kicked and punched him and threw him off the victim and that the victim was “white as a sheet” after regaining consciousness, according to charging documents. He also said the suspect left the residence after the assault, telling the victim he was “going to get a gun.”

According to the nephew, he and the victim “took refuge” in a residence on the property where the altercation occurred, police said.

The suspect characterized the altercation differently in an interview with the police, according to the police report. He said the victim had confronted him with a stick “and I took him to the ground and I said look, stop, stop.” He said the victim’s nephew “came out of nowhere and kicked me on the side of the head,” according to the police report.

When the police arrived on scene, the suspect allegedly wielded a “wrought iron fireplace shovel” and attempted to retreat into his home but was detained and placed in handcuffs, according to the police report and criminal complaint.

The victim told police he encountered the suspect with the drill in one hand and a stick in the other. After the two exchanged a few words, “all I remember is I was on the snow,” he told police.

The altercation occurred near a pump house between the residences where the suspect lives and where the victim’s daughter lives. The pump house “is a shared asset…used by three residences,” according to the police report. The suspect told police he arrived home from work and noticed he didn’t have water, so he went to the pump house and saw water going to the victim’s daughter’s house.

The victim’s nephew told police — when two officers arrived at the scene — the suspect had been trying to shut off water to the daughter’s home.

The two parties, victim and suspect, have been involved for months in a dispute over ownership of a property in the Rainbow Acres subdivision, near the entrance to Chilkat State Park, where the suspect has been living for a few years. After the previous owner granted the victim a quitclaim deed for the property in August, the victim filed to evict the suspect. But the suspect refused to leave, saying he had bought the home from the previous owner, according to court documents.

The eviction petition was denied by Juneau superior court judge Daniel Schally, following a recommendation by Haines magistrate Paul Korchin, who said in a Sept. 23 report he wasn’t convinced the previous owner had authority to sell the property in full to the victim.

The victim provided the court with a signed bill of sale and the quitclaim deed, but the suspect presented a co-tenancy agreement with the previous owner, dated April 2019, that said he could be entitled to partial ownership of the property under several conditions.

Following the magistrate’s recommendation, the victim submitted a letter from the previous owner saying the suspect didn’t make payments that would have accrued his interest in the property, that he had violated the co-tenancy agreement in 2020, that he owned no interest in the property and that she had sold the property to the victim.

But Schally, who followed the magistrate’s recommendation, said in an Oct. 7 order that the issue of ownership was beyond the purview of the eviction case and would need to be resolved through a civil action in the superior court. He said those lawsuits “are often very complex.”

A preliminary hearing in the criminal case is scheduled for 9 a.m. Dec. 9 at the Haines courthouse.

Author