Anchorage Daily News – Occupant of apartment kills intruder
Address:http://www.adn.com/metro/story/0,2633,254366,00.html

Occupant of apartment kills intruder
POLICE: Investigators try to sort out the relationships.
By Peter Porco
Anchorage Daily News
(Published April 3, 2001)

A man who broke into a Midtown apartment early Monday was shot dead by
an occupant, Anchorage police said.

John DaSilva Jr., 27, of Anchorage was pronounced dead inside the small
apartment at 3105 Eureka St., a gray flat-roofed five-plex.
DaSilva may have been trying to burglarize the home, police said.

No charges have been filed in the case. Police said they are still
investigating.

At least three people were inside the bedroom of apartment No. 1 at 3:30
a.m. when DaSilva broke the window beside the door and entered the
kitchen-living area, said Detective Eric Hamre. He walked into the
bedroom, where a confrontation took place, and was shot with a handgun
by one of the people there.

“We don’t have information about exactly what words were exchanged
between the two,” Hamre said.

DaSilva was known to one or more of the occupants, Hamre said, but he
was not considered a friend.

“It’s hard to know what’s going through all of their heads,” Hamre said.
“Obviously there’s some history there.”

Police would not say whether DaSilva carried a weapon. He was pronounced
dead at the scene.

A neighbor living in an adjoining apartment said he was awakened by the
sound of the window crashing.

“I heard a bunch of yelling, then a pop, pop, pop-pop-pop,” said David
King, a construction worker from Kenai who has been living on weekdays
in the building for about two years. “It didn’t register at first as
gunfire because they’re noisy all the time.”

King learned later that a man had been fatally shot, he said, when
police knocked on his door and asked whether he was all right.

The apartment has had so many occupants that it was hard to know who
lived there, said Ryan Brownell, an engineer who has lived on the block
for three years and was awakened by the noise.

“There are so many people coming and going, so many different people
going in and out all the time,” Brownell said.

By early Monday evening, police had left. The broken window had been
replaced, and the apartment was empty when a young woman drove up. She
got out of the car and began crying, saying DaSilva was the father of
her two young children and she wanted to see where he died.

The woman would not give her name. She said she lives in the Mat-Su
area. She opened the unlocked door of apartment No. 1 and walked inside.

The furnishings were disheveled. A radio was playing in the bedroom.
Five holes, carefully marked and labeled, pocked one wall near the
bedroom door. Another wall was smeared with blood.

The woman left without closing the door.

Reporter Peter Porco can be reached at [email protected] and at 257-4582.