Man arrested for trashing Roadhouse

TALKEETNA — Alaska State Troopers report that when a man started rampaging through the Talkeetna Roadhouse, calls poured in to dispatchers.

“The original call indicated that 911 had been called multiple times in reference to someone going crazy and smashing up the Roadhouse,” Trooper Lucas Hegg writes in a court case filed over the July 28 incident.

The calls started coming in just before 3 a.m. Troopers arrived on scene 40 minutes later. On their way there, they learned that the suspect was Augustus Shoulders, 19, of Talkeetna.

“Upon arrival,” Hegg writes, “I observed Shoulders walking away from the scene and yelling at another man in the road. Shoulders threw two punches at the other man and was highly aggressive.”

Hegg put Shoulders in his patrol car and started an investigation. He found that the rear door to the Roadhouse had been broken nearly off. A shower stall had been destroyed, a window next to the backdoor smashed and a table outside knocked over with the canopy broken off.

“The damage to the lodge was estimated at approximately $2,000,” Hegg wrote.

The trooper said that while he was taking notes of all the damage, “Shoulders was inside the patrol car trying to kick out the back window. He had been repeatedly told he needed to calm down.”

He said Shoulders was obviously intoxicated and smelled of booze.

Trooper Daniel Sadloske took Shoulders to Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility, but on the way Shoulders tried to kick out Sadloske’s rear window as well. Hegg writes that he and Sadloske stopped on the side of the road and “attempted to further restrain Shoulders.”

Sadloske got kicked for his trouble, after which the trooper “deployed his pepper spray.”

At 5:43 p.m., presumably back in Palmer, Shoulders blew a .173 on the Breathalyzer test. The legal limit for driving is .08. Shoulders was charged with burglary, criminal mischief, assault and disorderly conduct and jailed without bail pending his arraignment.

Bail was later set at $2,500

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