A 32-year-old man was fatally stabbed early Monday morning at a Fairbanks hotel, police say.
Jesse James Sanderson, also 32, was arrested on second-degree charges and jailed at Fairbanks Correctional Center, the Fairbanks Police Department said in a release Monday afternoon.
Sanderson knew the victim, who was not identified, police said. The two men, together with the victim’s girlfriend, were “hanging out together at the hotel during the night” before an early-morning call came into 911.
Just after 4 a.m., staff at the Super 8 Motel on Airport Way reported a disturbance involving guests, police said. The stabbing was reported while officers were en route.
Sanderson flagged down officers arriving at the motel and directed them to the victim, lying on the sidewalk with stab wounds to his chest, police said. The victim was transported to Fairbanks Memorial Hospital but died from his injuries.
The victim’s girlfriend and a hotel staffer told police that Sanderson stabbed the victim, they said. Sanderson told officers the victim had thrown the knife at his face and that’s when he stabbed him, the release states. “This was not consistent with witness statements.”
A few hours before the incident, Sanderson had made a report to police about someone stealing from him, though that person was not present during the stabbing, police said.
Sanderson called 911 to say someone had stolen from him, and police responded to the motel around 2:30 a.m., according to Teal Soden, communications director for the City of Fairbanks.
An officer who contacted him initially seized a gun from Sanderson “for officer safety” but later kept the weapon after Sanderson said he needed it back “so he could go get his stuff back,” Soden said. The officer told him he could come get his gun “at a later time.”
The officer said Sanderson told him he was on a prescription medication, she said.
But when officers returned later after the stabbing, several witnesses told police that Sanderson had been using heroin “and gets paranoid,” Soden said.
He was scheduled for an initial court appearance on Tuesday.
Fairbanks police ask anyone with information about this homicide to contact Lt. Amy Davis at adavis@fairbanks.us or 907-450-6565.
Correction: This story has been updated to remove a reference to the suspect acting as if he were “under the influence of narcotics” when he contacted police early Monday morning. That information was incorrectly reported in a media release.