ANCHORAGE – Customers have been coming to JJ’s Lounge for pool tables and pints, for more than 30 years, workers said.
But on a quiet Sunday night in 2011, prosecutors said, a group of men showed up at the neighborhood staple for battle instead of beer.
A bar fight between Lee Chang and Emelio Ramirez soon became a deadly gunfight.
The parking lot of JJ’s Lounge became the crime scene after a bloody gun battle left two men dead.
More than two years later, the trial for the men involved in the shooting deaths of 35-year-old Emilio Ramirez, a.k.a Mario, and 28-year-old Ka Meng Chang, a.k.a. Kenny, began Thursday morning.
Ka Meng Chang’s brother and cousin — Lee Chang and Vang Chang — sat together on one side of the courtroom.
Lee Chang is facing five charges, two of which are first-degree murder. Vang Chang is accused of getting rid of a weapon used in the gunfight and is facing three related charges.
Ryan Laulu sat just a few feet away from the family of the man he is accused of killing.
Laulu is facing four charges, one of them first-degree murder, another — second-degree murder.
Attorneys on all sides of this case agree that this began as an argument at a bar, nothing out of the ordinary, until tempers flared escalated the situation.
“This is what happens when you bring a gun to a bar fight,” said deputy district attorney Clint Campion.