Alex Thanapong Yu was born in Thailand, raised in Sri Lanka and died in Anchorage before he could escape the troubles of his teenage years.
The 18-year-old was shot and killed around 1:20 a.m. Saturday at the Alano Club, a sober facility on Spenard Road that was rented out for a dance party Friday night.
Anchorage police were releasing few details about the shooting Sunday. No arrests have been made, APD spokesperson Jennifer Castro said, calling the shooting a "targeted event" but one detectives are still investigating. The club declined to say who hosted the party.
Witnesses described Yu's lifeless body left behind on the dance floor as others fled outside Saturday morning. Yu's mother said she was told her son was shot in the chest at close range.
Arraya Thepuxsonnarong on Sunday described her son as a smart boy with a quick sense of humor who protected his friends, but who disregarded her urgings to focus on life's more serious aspects.
Yu's father, Yowsan Yu, said in an email that his son lived with him and his parents in Sri Lanka from the age of 6. He attended an international school and excelled in basketball. Thepuxsonnarong said she worked two jobs during that time to help support her son and visited twice a year. Yu begged her to take him back to Anchorage -- she's lived here since 1986 -- once he finished middle school.
"Then came the dangerous years when he turned 15," his father wrote. The teen came to America and began making a series of questionable choices about his actions and his education, his father said.
Yu's mother said she thought Yu would be old enough to appreciate how hard she worked and do his part: stay in school, make good decisions. Stay safe. Thepuxsonnarong said her son was starting to do better. He just didn't have enough time to turn his life around.
Yu struggled to stay in school -- though he was just four credits short of graduating high school when he died -- and got in trouble for low-level crimes like shoplifting, his mother said. He'd moved out a few months ago. But in the last year, she said, he'd buckled down in a way he hadn't during his first two years back in Alaska.
Yu told a friend that Friday night's party would be his last, his mother said. Last month, Yu was arrested for leaving the scene of a crash involving an unattended vehicle and convicted on that misdemeanor charge July 10. The conviction came with a three-year probation sentence; he didn't want to get into trouble again.
The last time Thepuxsonnarong saw her son was Friday afternoon, when she turned down a request for money but drove him to get a haircut. He told her he had a job interview Saturday.
She has no idea why someone would kill her only son. She still hasn't been able to see his body.
"I don't know what he (had) in his mind, I don't know what came through in the teenage world," she said Sunday. "He seemed to be easygoing. I love him and everybody just try to get him through this teen difficulty and have a better life."
She planned to attend a ceremony at the Wat Dhamma Bhavana Buddhist Center later that night to begin a three-day ritual honoring the dead.
Thepuxsonnarong learned of initial rumors swirling around his death early Saturday morning while working a night shift at Delta Air Lines. Police confirmed it later that morning.
She visited the Alano Club Saturday evening with a friend, she said, after a relative in Thailand told her Yu's "spirit was still in that place." Club director Don Heflin pointed out the spot where Yu died. The women spoke and prayed.
"At least now I hope he's here with me," Thepuxsonnarong said Sunday afternoon, from the neat Turnagain apartment they once shared.
Anchorage police ask anyone with information about the shooting to call 907-786-8900.