Anchorage man threatened homeless people and fired shotgun in Midtown camp, charges say

An Anchorage man is accused of threatening and firing a shotgun at people in a Midtown homeless encampment earlier this week. No one was injured in the Tuesday night incident, police said.

Andres Corona, 39, faces six felony charges, including four counts of misconduct involving weapons and two counts of assault. He also faces three misdemeanor charges, including driving under the influence.

Just after 11 p.m. on Tuesday, police received multiple calls reporting that a man was firing a shotgun from a Chevy pickup truck near the 3300 block of Eagle Street, according to a written statement from Anchorage police.

Eagle Street intersects with a stretch of East 33rd Avenue where a number of homeless residents have relocated after the city last month dismantled a former large encampment on Fairbanks Street near the Tudor Road Home Depot. A man was killed in a shooting at the Fairbanks Street camp in late June.

[The city dismantled a Midtown Anchorage homeless camp. Almost immediately, another formed nearby.]

When officers arrived late Tuesday night, they spoke with a group of homeless people near several RVs, according to an initial charging document filed in District Court.

One woman said she saw a man “acting erratically and yelling” and that he was holding a shotgun and “racked it,” the document said. He then got into a pickup truck and drove east on 33rd Avenue, fired the shotgun, and made a U-turn, driving in the woman’s direction and “more rounds were fired,” the charging document said.

Another man living in one of the RVs at the encampment told officers that Corona and two other men were “harassing the homeless individuals in the area,” the charging document said. The man living homeless in the RV chased them off, but the three men came back, and Corona “attacked him from behind and a physical altercation ensued,” the homeless resident told officers, according to the charging document. Corona and the other men left, but about 20 minutes later, the homeless resident saw Corona alone in a truck and brandishing a shotgun, the charging document said.

The homeless resident told officers that “the suspect pointed the shotgun at a group of individuals before driving away and he shot twice into the air as he left,” the document said. He then turned around, passing the group again, and fired two times in the direction of the group of people, the charging document said. The man reported to officers that he saw sparks where one shotgun round hit metal near an RV, according to the charging document.

Two other homeless residents gave officers similar accounts of the incident, and officers found three shotgun shells along East 33rd, according to the charging document.

Officers located the truck and conducted a traffic stop, and saw a shotgun on the truck’s center console, according to the document.

In the statement Wednesday, Anchorage police said the “motive behind Corona’s behavior is still under investigation.”

Corona “made disparaging comments towards the homeless population” while undergoing processing at the Anchorage jail after his arrest, according to the charging document. His comments included, “We need to get these f-----s,” “They’re taking over Anchorage,” and “Hope they don’t make it to your neighborhood,” according to the charging document.

A spokeswoman for the police department said that Corona appears to have a “fixed address,” meaning he is housed.

Many businesses near the East 33rd encampment say the area has experienced a surge in criminal activity, trespassing and drug use, and they’ve called for the city to take action.

Studies show that people experiencing homelessness in America face a greatly increased risk of violence and victimization. The National Coalition for the Homeless documented 1,923 reported acts of violence toward people experiencing homelessness in a 23-year period, between 1999 and 2022, with 29% of the violence fatal. The crimes “appear to have been motivated by a perpetrator’s bias” against those living homeless, according to the report.