2 adult males assault 14-year-old boys

WASILLA — A 14-year-old boy was hospitalized Monday with injuries Alaska State Troopers described as serious after two men allegedly assaulted him and another teen.

According to a trooper press statement, at 6:54 p.m., June 16 multiple people called to report two or three men were beating up a pair of teenagers on the side of Tait Road. One of the teens was lying in the ditch. The men left in a silver car with two dogs and a third man inside, according to documents trooper Bruce Weight filed in court.

Weight went to the scene and talked to the boys. He writes that one of them had blood smeared on his face and appeared to have a broken jaw. The other had a piece of one his front teeth missing.

The boys told Weight they’d been walking along the road, heading home from Valley Country Store.

“They were waving at cars as cars drove by on Tait drive. The suspect car flipped them off, so the teenagers flipped the vehicle off. The vehicle then stopped and two adults males exited and began yelling at the teenagers,” Weight writes.

The men warned the teens not to flip them off again and got back into their car.

“As the vehicle was leaving, the teenagers flipped the vehicle off again. The two adult males exited the vehicle and attacked the teenagers, hitting them in the head with their fists. The other adult male stayed in the vehicle and restrained the two dogs,” Weight writes.

As he was interviewing the boys, troopers pulled the silver car over on the Palmer-Wasilla Highway. Trooper documents name two men they say got out and hit the kids — Jonathan Kaalakea, 24, of Wasilla and Jaime Kaalakea, 20, of Wasilla.

The Kaalakeas told troopers they had hit the boys but told a slightly different story about the events that led to the beating. They said the boys were the first to show their middle fingers, not the adults.

“Jonathan Kaalakea had been the main aggressor, but Jaime Kaalakea had also participated in the assault,” Weight writes.

From here, troopers took one of the boys to the hospital and the other to talk to his mother about what happened, then to the scene of the traffic stop to make sure that the men troopers had were the ones that assaulted him and his friend.

The boy at Mat-Su Regional Medical Center was treated for a possible broken jaw. Also at the hospital — Jonathan Kaalakea required four stitches for a cut on a knuckle on his right hand.

Jonathan Kaalakea was jailed at the Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility on $3,000, charged with assault. Jaime Kaalakea was charged with a less serious count of assault and released with a summons ordering him to appear in court. As of Tuesday morning the elder Kaalakea had made bail and been released. Court records show that the assault is the most serious charge that Jonathan Kaalakea has faced in Alaska. His only other open case is for driving without insurance. Jaime’s most serious offense prior to this was a marijuana possession charge to which he pleaded guilty in May of 2013.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.