Man went to grocery store to kill someone, ‘he didn’t care who,’ Alaska official says
A man accused of fatally shooting a customer outside an Alaska grocery store and then firing more shots inside the store was ordered to serve 85 years behind bars, prosecutors said.
Joshua Butcher, 44, received the sentence after pleading guilty to one count of first-degree murder and two counts of third-degree assault in the shooting described by an assistant district attorney as “one of, if not the most, shocking cases in Fairbanks’ history,” the Alaska Department of Law said in a Jan. 21 news release.
McClatchy News couldn’t immediately reach Butcher’s attorney Jan. 22 for comment.
Butcher is accused of fatally shooting Harley Titus, 41, on Nov. 7, 2021, as Titus left the Safeway store.
Butcher “then proceeded to fire multiple shots inside the Safeway, injuring one employee and placing multiple other people in fear of imminent serious physical injury,” according to prosecutors.
A store employee was shot in the foot, Fairbanks police said at the time.
Both Titus and the wounded employee were taken to a hospital, where Titus was pronounced dead, Fairbanks police wrote in a news release after the shooting.
Police said Butcher called authorities minutes after the shooting and reported that he was outside the police department, that he’d “been at Safeway, and that officers could come out (and) arrest him.”
During sentencing, Judge Patricia Haines said “the danger that a public shooting poses to society does not diminish with age,” according to the Department of Law news release.
“Video evidence shows the defendant stalking around the store, gun in hand,” Haines said. “(Butcher) went there with the specific intention of killing someone, he didn’t care who.”
Titus was a father with a “contagious and never-ending” smile, an obituary said.
He was a wildland firefighter who loved making people laugh and tried hard to help other people, a cousin told the Anchorage Daily News.
“I can’t stop thinking of what happened and why, and I just can’t stop thinking of him,” the cousin said after the shooting, according to the outlet.
This story was originally published January 22, 2025 at 6:15 PM with the headline "Man went to grocery store to kill someone, ‘he didn’t care who,’ Alaska official says."
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