Slain prosecutor, former resident remembered

BARROW — A former Mat-Su Borough School District School Board member who unsuccessfully ran for mayor was shot and killed in Barrow Monday where he had been working as an Assistant District Attorney.

North Slope Borough police officers found Brian Sullivan, 48, shot to death at a home on Laura Madison Street at roughly 10 p.m., Dec. 8, according to a press release from the Alaska State Troopers.

Ronald Fischer, 47, was arrested and charged with murder the next day. Media accounts indicate Fischer is an ex-boyfriend of a woman Sullivan was dating while in Barrow.

In 2011 special election Sullivan ran for Mat-Su Borough mayor in a crowded field to fill the seat after Talis Colberg resigned to lead Mat-Su College. Sullivan finished second to Larry DeVilbiss, who is still serving as Mat-Su Mayor.

Prior to that, Sullivan served an abbreviated term on the school board before he resigned due to conflicts with his military career.

Ole Larson, who served with Sullivan on the school board and is still on the body, said he remembered Sullivan as an excellent board member.

“I think he was a very conscientious school board member, especially with his military background, very pro-community, very pro-children, very pro-schools,” Larson said.

He said that Sullivan didn’t have it easy, either, serving on the board while also serving in the military and raising a family.

“All three of his kids were going to school and he would try to go to all those activities,” Larson, recalled, saying he sympathized, having tried to serve on the Matanuska Electric Association Board in the 1990s when his three kids were still in school.

“That was trying on him, to do an excellent job as a board member, and then all the other commitments, but while he was there he was very conscientious, knew the material, read the packets and had some really good input on everything,” Larson said.

In the military he served at Guantanamo Bay and also in Iraq, in a combat role in which 53 members of his brigade didn’t make it back, according to a Frontiersman report from 2007. That story was about his return and spending Christmas home with his family. Sullivan’s three daughters attended Valley schools, and one of them wrote for the Frontiersman’s Schools page.

Media reports indicate that Sullivan moved to Barrow after his divorce and worked there as a prosecuting attorney, returning to Mat-Su to visit his children and remaining on friendly terms with his former wife.

In Barrow, he also was still involved in politics, serving as a district chair for the Alaska Republican Party, according to the party’s Facebook page.

Before moving to Alaska with the military he represented the Joint Base Lewis-McCord area in the House of Representatives in Washington state. Sullivan was born in Washington, according to a website he set up for himself while still in private practice.

An abbreviated obituary published in today’s Frontiersman notes that funeral services will be held in Tacoma, Washington, at a later date.

Troopers say they have taken the lead in the investigation into Sullivan’s death. Troopers are working in conjunction with an assistant attorney general from the state’s Office of Special Prosecutions and Appeals and officers from the North Slope Borough Police Department.

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