Wanted man back in custody before trial

March 21, 2006

MARY AMES/Frontiersman reporter

PALMER -A man listed as wanted by Alaska State Troopers in Friday's Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman was at Mat-Su Pretrial Facility where he had been lodged on an unrelated charge last month, and, safe to say, he is not a happy camper.

Patrick Michael Aleman, 26, was arraigned in Palmer Superior Court March 13 on three counts of second-degree misconduct involving a controlled substance and one charge of fourth-degree MICS after investigators with the Mat-Su Narcotics Unit connected him with the dome-tent methamphetamine lab near the Vienna Woods area of Wasilla.

In February, contract workers clearing a fire break for the Mat-Su Borough stumbled on a blue and gray three-man dome tent in the woods off the subdivision near Church Road, according to Dwayne Shelton, an investigator with the drug unit.

&#8220Short of some kid stumbling on it, there was no way anyone else would have found it,” Shelton said. &#8220We couldn't be certain, but no one had been there in a month or two, maybe around October or November. It looked like they had been cooking and then just left.”

Shelton said Aleman was connected to the tent by talking to people at a trailer park nearby and through fingerprints. The state crime lab identified latent prints belonging to Aleman, he said.

&#8220There's no other suspects, no one else,” he said.

Investigators didn't find mounds of meth trash, but there was evidence of meth production through different phases, Shelton said.

The fumes that accumulate while making meth in an unvented tent could be fatal, according to Shelton.

Court records show that Aleman was charged with fourth-degree MICS, third-degree MICS and tampering with physical evidence in February 2005, Aleman was arrested in March 2005, and prosecutors dismissed the charges in November.

Aleman was on probation when he was arrested in February 2004 on charges of first-degree vehicle theft, second-degree burglary, two counts of fourth-degree MICS, sixth-degree MICS, two counts of fourth-degree weapons misconduct (for having brass knuckles) and driving with a canceled, suspended or revoked license, records show. Aleman pleaded no contest to three charges, the vehicle theft, fourth-degree MICS and DWLCSR in August 2004, and the prosecution dismissed the rest of the charges, records show.

Aleman also pleaded no contest to fourth-degree criminal mischief in August 2004 for setting fire to a Subaru station wagon belonging to Sabrina Hunt, the mother of his child, according to a police report. Aleman told the police officer that he lit the fire because he was angry about not being allowed to see his daughter, the report said.

Court records show Hunt filed restraining orders against Aleman in 2004 and 2005.

Aleman was charged with second-degree theft in September 2002, and the charge was dismissed in July 2003, according to court records. Aleman was also on probation in May 2002, when he was arrested for driving while intoxicated, and he pleaded no contest to that charge in August 2002, records show.

Court records show no charges against Aleman in Alaska before 2002.

Aleman is scheduled for a jury trial on June 6.

Contact Mary Ames at

352-2284 or mary.ames@

frontiersman.com.