Troopers investigate assault

WASILLA — Alaska State Troopers have jailed one man and are seeking another after a robbery that bloodied a man’s nose in Wasilla this week.

According to an affidavit trooper Robert Lawson filed in the case against Jeremy Blair, troopers were called to an apartment building on Beaver Avenue shortly after midnight Monday.

Residents told them they’d heard noises coming from the hallway and peeked out an apartment door to see what was up. They spotted two men in hooded sweatshirts with handkerchiefs over their faces armed with handguns and “a red metal object,” Lawson wrote. The men were trying to kick in the door of the neighboring apartment, the witnesses said.

The man whose nose was eventually bloodied said he quickly shut the door. But he’d been spotted and one of the two masked men then kicked in his door.

The witness “attempted to close the door and was being helped by one of his friends. One of the men had gotten his hand inside and the man was holding the metal object,” Lawson wrote.

A smack with the object bloodied the man’s nose. The two men on the other side of the door were demanding money and to be let inside. After a short struggle, the two men in the hallway gave up, the witness said.

Witnesses inside the apartment complex said the two men in masks fled in a silver four-door sedan.

Troopers on their way to the scene spotted a similar car leaving the area and pulled it over, Lawson wrote.

The trooper who stopped the car looked inside and spied the red shaft of a hammer and a semi-automatic pistol behind the driver’s seat.

Also in the car were Blair, 22, of Wasilla, and Glen Baldwin, 27, of Anchorage.

Troopers took both of them back to the station, Lawson wrote, where at about 2:30 a.m. he showed up to interview them.

According to his affidavit, neither Baldwin nor Lawson admitted to knowing anything about the robbery, even after Lawson pointed out they matched the description given by the people in the apartment complex.

“Glen stated several times he knew nothing of the home invasion and that it was weird that they fit the description so well,” Lawson wrote.

As for Blair, “I talked about what had happened last night and he too denied knowing anything of the home invasion,” Lawson wrote.

A search of Blair prior to his trip to troopers’ Palmer post turned up a number of things including an Altoids box. Lawson wrote that, when threatened with a search warrant for the box, Blair let him open it.

Inside, Lawson wrote, he found four baggies of a crystalline powder that later tested positive as methamphetamine. Blair admitted to troopers he’d been selling the drug.

Blair was arrested that day but as of Friday evening Baldwin was still at large with a $10,000 warrant for his arrest.

Blair was initially charged with drug misconduct and weapons misconduct for possessing a gun and drugs at the same time.

A Palmer grand jury Jan. 9 indict Blair and Baldwin with the robbery. Both face three counts of burglary and one of robbery.

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