Homeowner not liable for guest’s shooting spree

WASILLA — The state’s highest court has ruled that a homeowner is not liable for a shooting spree in her home in 2006 that wounded her and another man and left two others dead.

The case revolves around a shooting on Plymouth Circle off the Palmer-Wasilla Highway near Hyer Road.

According to the Alaska Supreme Court ruling issued Friday, Simone Greenway befriended Carrie Randall-Evans two months prior to the shooting. Randall-Evans was trying to get away from her husband, Jeffrey Evans, at the time.

“Carrie confessed to Greenway that she was afraid that Jeffrey would hurt her, that she would never get away and that Jeffrey might kill her,” according to the ruling, penned by Justice Dana Fabe.

The night of the shooting, Greenway, Carrie Randall-Evans, Jeffrey Evans and Bill Anthony were hanging out at Greenway’s house. Randall-Evans and Greenway started dancing suggestively, kissing one another and taunting Evans.

“Greenway acknowledged … that she was teasing Jeffrey ‘on purpose’ with the intent of punishing him ‘because he was a jealous man,’” Fabe wrote. “Greenway said that while she was laughing at Jeffrey she was attempting to express to Carrie the nonverbal message that ‘you don’t have to be afraid.’”

Jeffrey went out to the garage, got a gun he’d brought with him and shot Greenway once and Anthony five times. He knelt beside Greenway and shot her again, then chased Randall-Evans down and shot her three times, killing her. Then he shot and killed himself.

Greenway and Anthony survived, though Anthony later died in a car crash on the Parks Highway.

In the aftermath, David Hurn, the father of Randall-Evans’ two minor children, sued Greenway and the estate of Jeffrey Evans. Evans’ estate settled. Superior Court Judge Kari Kristiansen threw out the case against Greenway. It is that decision that was appealed to the Alaska Supreme Court.

The lawsuit was brought under the theory that Greenway had a duty not to act in a way likely to provoke violence, that she, as owner of the house, had a duty not to put her guests in mortal danger.

“A landowner has a general duty to ‘act as a reasonable person in maintaining his property in a reasonably safe condition in view of all the circumstances.’ This generally does not include the duty to control guests in the home,” Fabe writes.

But there are exceptions, some of which hinge on whether Greenway could have foreseen that her dancing with Evans’ wife would have brought on a shooting rampage.

“We conclude that Jeffrey’s shooting spree was a highly extraordinary response to Greenway’s dance,” Fabe writes.

She says the law has a presumption “that the criminal acts of third parties are unforeseeable” and there’s simply not enough evidence in the case to overcome that presumption.

Fabe goes on to write that even though the law doesn’t currently include a duty on the part of homeowners to avoid provoking guests, the court could make one.

“But we refuse to give victims the duty to prevent their own abuse and the hold them liable when they fail,” Fabe writes. “If Greenway is liable for taunting an abusive husband, it follows that victims themselves may be liable for provoking their partners if the result is harm to a third party.”

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