ANCHORAGE - Police continue to search for a suspect in Monday’s triple shooting.
Robert Workman, 55, was shot and killed in a tent not far from the Lucky Wishbone restaurant around 6 p.m. Monday evening. Mea Melovidov, 47, was also shot in the tent and died a short time later at a local hospital.
The name of the third victim, a man, has not been released. At last word he was still in the hospital.
Police believe all three people in the tent had lived in Anchorage for some time. No one has said officially if they were homeless. But at nearby Bean’s Café, clients are worried and afraid.
“Many of our clients are scared,” said Bean’s Director Lisa Sauder. “They’re concerned they may have lost a friend. Nobody really knows what the situation is right now, whether it was a contained incident or a disagreement.”
Workers at the shelter were urging clients to sleep indoors tonight, at least until the killer is caught.
The murders have left some people frightened, but they’ve left others just as frustrated.
“It’s awful that it took two murders to really push this in the public eye,” said Heidi Heinrich, longtime manager of the Lucky Wishbone. The restaurant is the business closest to where the shootings took place.
For Heinrich the murders are the last straw in a long list of problems associated with public inebriates and homeless people who are putting her business at risk.
“First thing this morning, one of our first customers called in and said, ‘have they got the shooter yet?’ Our response was, ‘we don’t know.’ And her response was, ‘we aren’t coming to Lucky Wishbone until they do,’” Heinrich said.
Heinrich was grateful for a packed house at lunchtime and one table in particular – a group of Anchorage police officers who dined there specifically to show support for the longtime business.