Woman charged in assault linked to fatal downtown Anchorage shooting

A fight between two women outside a downtown Anchorage bar early Sunday preceded a shooting that left one man dead and another critically wounded, according to a criminal complaint.

Surveillance video from the Gaslight Bar shows 30-year-old Patricia Avery running out of the bar on West Fourth Avenue and punching a woman in the face, according to a sworn statement filed with the complaint by Officer Kristi Mercer. The woman had her back to Avery at the time, it said.

As the two women got into a fight just after 2:30 a.m., two men with each of them began to fight each other, the complaint said. One man could be seen up pulling his shirt and shooting the other man, 30-year-old Tahjeay Baldwin, it said. Baldwin fell to the ground and then fired his own weapon at the other man, Mercer wrote.

Police said in an update this week that whether the two parties involved in the fight knew each other remained under investigation.

Baldwin, shot in the torso, was pronounced dead at Providence Alaska Medical Center, according to police. The other man, found in a nearby car with a gunshot wound in his neck, was hospitalized at Alaska Native Medical Center, they said. He has not been charged with any crimes.

Avery can be seen on the surveillance video picking up Baldwin’s gun and handing it to 38-year-old Markin L. Giddins, police said. The weapon was later found in a nearby garbage can, the complaint said.

Avery is facing charges of fourth-degree assault and evidence tampering. Giddins is facing evidence tampering charges.