Trial begins for bar shooter

PALMER — What exactly happened just before Halloween 2010 at Latitude 62 in Talkeetna? Why did Sam Clark shoot and kill Dirk Fast?

The what, but not the why, were examined in detail Wednesday when testimony began in Clark’s murder trial.

Nancy Trump owns Latitude 62, a bar, restaurant and motel she’s owned since 1986, two years after it was built. She said a folk musician from the East Coast was performing on the night in question, Oct. 29, 2010. Trump said she was facing the stage watching the show when she heard the shot and ran for a phone.

“I just knew somebody had been shot,” she said. “I didn’t know who it was or how it happened.”

Mary Farina saw a lot more that night. She testified that she’d gone to Latitude 62 to visit with friends. She was in the bar and sitting with a group of them, including Fast, when Clark walked in and sat down at a table.

She, like Trump, said she’d been friends with Fast for year, but didn’t know Clark. But Fast did. He walked over to Clark’s table and the two men talked. She said she didn’t hear raised voices, didn’t sense any tension.

“Dirk started standing up and Sam started standing up and then I heard a loud bang,” Farina testified. “Dirk started walking toward me and fell down.”

And Clark?

“He said, ‘He killed my family,’” Farina said. “I assumed he was talking about Dirk.”

Clark calmly walked out of the bar, she said.

“What was the general feeling or mood?” Assistant District Attorney Michael Perry asked.

“Pretty freaked out. We just let him leave and then locked all the doors,” Farina answered.

She said EMTs who happened to be at Latitude 62 — one works in the kitchen, another was attending the concert — came to help Fast.

“How did that go?” Perry asked.

“Not well,” Farina said.

Clark’s attorney, Jeff Bradley, focused his questions on getting a clearer picture of what Farina saw.

She said she did not see either man’s hands before the shot was fired, but it was quiet enough in the bar she would have heard an argument if they’d been having one.

“Sam wasn’t in any kind of a rage? Didn’t give off any angry kind of a vibe?” Bradley asked.

“No,” Farina said, confirming what she’d said about Clark being calm that night.

Farina’s account squares in every detail with the account bartender Ruby Fortner gave Alaska State Troopers and which is contained in an affidavit troopers filed shortly after Clark’s arrest in 2010.

Clark was arrested later that night during a traffic stop on Talkeetna Spur Road. Patrons of Latitude 62 had told Alaska State Troopers what kind of car to look for.

For his part, Clark told troopers he’d been talking to Fast about trouble crossing the Canada border. Clark wanted to move to Missouri, but an old drunken driving conviction was keeping him out of Canada.

“Clark indicated that during the conversation, Fast began ‘getting fidgety’ and pulled his cellphone out of his picket, robbed his leg and raised his shirt up. Clark indicated he thought that fast was attempting to pull a weapon,” Trooper Tony Wegrzyn wrote in the same affidavit that contains Fortner’s account.

Clark’s trial is expected to last into the middle of next week. Two rows of the viewing gallery were full at Wednesday’s proceedings. Most seemed to have connections to Fast, though some seemed to know Clark.

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