By James Halpin 

McClatchy Newspapers

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The man who won the state’s first half-million-dollar lottery was attacked on a downtown street Tuesday afternoon with a tire iron or metal pipe, according to Anchorage police.

Police say Alec Ahsoak, 53, was attacked when a man approached him to ask if he was the man who won the $500,000 jackpot.

Whether the attack was motivated by Ahsoak’s winning the lottery or the widely distributed reports that he is a three-time convicted sex offender was unclear.

"There was no apparent attempt at robbery," police Lt. Dave Parker said. "He was struck eight to 10 times, and then he threw his Pepsi at the assailant and he ran for Phyllis’ Cafe and the assailant ran off."

By Tuesday evening, Ahsoak had been discharged from the hospital and police had taken a man and a woman into custody, Parker said. The man was being questioned by police and had not yet been charged with a crime, he said.

Ahsoak told officers he had been stopped by a white man believed to be about 21 and wearing a blue-and-white checked shirt, blue jeans and a white baseball cap as he entered the 5th Avenue Mall. The stranger asked if he was the lottery winner, and Ahsoak said he was, then went into the mall.

When he walked out minutes later carrying a Pepsi, the man approached him and began hitting him on the head with the weapon, police said.

Ahsoak was transported to a local hospital to be treated for his injuries, which did not appear to be life-threatening, police said.

"There were injuries to his head — lacerations, that kind of stuff," Parker said. "Nobody knows how bad it is until doctors do their job, but he was talking and able to communicate with the officers."

Police were continuing to comb the area for the assailant. There were "loads of witnesses" to the attack, but none of them were immediately able to identify the man, Parker said. It did not immediately appear that the attack had been caught on any surveillance cameras, he said.

Ahsoak came forward as the lottery winner Saturday, and reports that he is a convicted sex offender were soon publicized by a local television station and picked up by other outlets, including the Anchorage Daily News. By Monday, Ahsoak’s victims were telling the media they thought Ahsoak should not benefit from the lottery, which was conducted by Lucky Times Pull Tabs to benefit the nonprofit Standing Together Against Rape.

"Oh my God, I was so afraid something was going to happen to him," said Nancy Haag, executive director of Standing Together Against Rape. "I’m just very sorry to hear that this has happened. ... Nobody deserves to be a victim of any kind of violence, and that’s our stand."

Asked whether the media should have publicized that Ahsoak was a convicted sex offender, Haag said, "I think it put him, obviously, at greater risk because there are people who like to take justice into their own hands."

Ahsoak was convicted in 1993 of molesting two girls under the age of 13. He was sentenced to four years in prison, according to court records.

In March 2000, police arrested him again for molesting a different young girl he was baby-sitting. Through a plea bargain, Ahsoak was sentenced to six years in prison on a single count of sexual abuse of a minor. Prosecutors in that case dropped another sex abuse charge and a charge of failing to register as a sex offender.