Court papers reveal sordid details of assault

PALMER — Documents filed in court paint a bizarre and gruesome picture of a case that began earlier this week when a man sexually assaulted an acquaintance with a foreign object.

According to a sworn statement Alaska State Trooper James P. Streicher filed in the case against Qauarliak Manumik, 28, the sexual assault was reported at 3:49 a.m., Sunday when a cab driver arrived to pick Manumik up.

The driver told troopers that day that he “had given rides to Manumik in the past without Manumik paying and Manumik called him this morning saying to come to his house because he had (the driver’s) money,” Streicher wrote.

When the driver arrived, Manumik invited him inside.

“When (the driver) went inside he saw a male lying on the floor partially naked who appeared unconscious, or at least partially unconscious. (The driver) said the man on the floor… had the handle of a frying pan stuck up his anus,” Streicher wrote.

Streicher’s affidavit only identified the 26-year-old male by his initials.

According to the driver, Manumik told troopers “that’s what a person gets for passing out at Manumik’s house.”

The driver told troopers he watched Manumik move the pan and kick the man “hard in the head.”

The driver and Manumik got into the driver’s cab. Not long afterward, the driver called for help from other cab drivers then “forcefully removed Manumik from the cab. He then drove down the street and called 911.”

Streicher wrote that two troopers arrived at Manumik’s house four minutes after the driver called.

In Streicher’s affidavit, Trooper Pete Steen reports peering through a window of Manumik’s home and observing more-or-less the same scene the cab driver described.

Troopers went into the home to check on the unconscious man. He was injured in the assault and was hospitalized. He was later transferred to Alaska Native Medical Center for surgery.

Manumik, meanwhile, was arrested. He declined to talk to troopers.

Streicher writes that at 1 p.m., ANMC called to say that the unconscious man had woken up. Trooper Investigator Steve Kevan went to the hospital to talk to him.

The man told him he’d flown in from Alakanuk on Saturday evening, arriving at about 5:30 p.m. and took a cab with Manumik back to his house.

The man told troopers that by then he had already been drinking and while in the Valley bought two bottles of alcohol.

He told troopers that he blacked out at about 10:30 p.m.

“The next thing (he) remembers is waking up in the hospital with a tube in his throat,” Streicher wrote.

Manumik, meanwhile, was charged with sexual assault and assault. He was jailed at the Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility. His criminal record includes theft and weapons misconduct convictions, as well as a sexual abuse of a minor case from 2005. He’s required to register as a sex offender as a result of that case. As of Wednesday evening he was still incarcerated.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270

or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.