As Anchorage police investigate the 28th homicide of the year, the family of 29-year-old victim Ian Alexander Bobich is making a desperate plea for help.
Just before 11 p.m. on Monday, police dispatch received several calls from people in the area reporting gunshots near Elm Street and East Bluff Drive. When officers arrived, they found Bobich dead outside of a residence on the 800 block of Elm Street.
“I don’t know the exact number of gunshots — they’re saying five to seven — two of them struck my son in the back,” said Maureen Costello, Bobich’s mother. “That ended his life. Somebody, somewhere heard something, saw something. I’m begging them to come forward.”
She said three years ago, Bobich and his fiance moved from Cleveland, Ohio, to have an Alaska adventure. He worked on the North Slope and then became a sheet metal worker for the Sheet Metal Workers’ Local Union 23 . In his spare time, he loved to fish.
“He was my everything, my whole entire world,” his fiance said.
She asked KTVA to conceal her identity because she doesn’t know who gunned Bobich down, or if they’ll target her.
She said they’d known each other since childhood and were together for 12 years. He’d recently become a father to their 10-week-old son, Kaiden, and had an 11-year-old son back in Cleveland.
“I just want [people] to remember him for the good spirit and soul that he was, and how he cherished his heritage, and he wanted nothing but the best for his kids, and that he was really a true story of [how] people can change and turn their lives around,” Bobich’s fiance said.
“It was so fabulous to watch him nurture another human being,” Costello said of her son. “Kaiden actually laughed today, out loud. And Ian missed it. And he’s not here to hear it now.”
His family is hopeful someone with information will come forward, so whoever killed Bobich can be brought to justice.
Bobich’s fiance said all she knows right now is that he left to get baby formula Monday night and never came back.
“Just please come forward so I can tell his son one day what really happened, and so his son, both of his sons, can know that the person who did this to their dad is getting what they deserve,” she pleaded.
She also wanted to thank Anchorage police officer Daniel Otte, who, after working on the case, went out and bought the family some baby formula.
Anyone with information on the incident is asked to call police at 907-786-8900.
Bobich’s family wants to have him buried at “home” in Cleveland, and have set up a GoFundMe account to help with funeral expenses.
KTVA 11’s Daniella Rivera can be reached via email or on Facebook and Twitter.
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