A man is dead and a woman wounded after a stabbing in a Midtown Anchorage apartment on Thursday afternoon, police said.
Officers were called to the 400 block of West Northern Lights Boulevard around 5:30 p.m. on a report of a stabbing and a potential gunshot, according a sworn affidavit written by an Anchorage police detective and attached to the charges.
When officers arrived, they found a man outside holding another man, later identified as 20-year-old Tonise Salevao, on the ground at gunpoint, the affidavit said.
Inside the apartment, officers found a man and a woman with stab wounds, police said. They began providing first aid to both, but the man died at the scene, the affidavit said. The woman was transported to the hospital and underwent surgery for life-threatening wounds, according to the affidavit.
Officers interviewed family members of Salevao who live in the apartment and found multiple knives inside and outside near where he was taken into custody, the affidavit said. One person said Salevao had previously used heroin and “had been paranoid about the mafia and had been sleeping with knives under his pillow,” the affidavit said.
Police did not specify the relationship between Salevao and the victims.
Salevao told detectives during an interview that he was acting in self-defense, the affidavit said. He began arguing with the man he stabbed about “tunnels underneath the kitchen,” it said. Salevao told detectives the man hit him in the arm with a butcher knife, the affidavit said. Detectives did not see any injuries to his arm.
Salevao was charged with first- and second-degree murder, attempted murder and first-degree assault. He was scheduled to appear in court Friday afternoon.