Alex Bender Sentenced to 20 Years for 2017 Anchorage Stabbing

From the Attorney General's Office:

Oct. 21, 2022 (Anchorage, AK) – Thursday, 32-year-old Alex Bender was sentenced to 20 years in prison by Anchorage Superior Court Judge Eric Aarseth for stabbing a man at the Executive Suites in Anchorage on Nov. 9, 2017.

In May 2022, an Anchorage jury convicted Bender of first-degree assault, a class A felony, for stabbing a 42-year-old man from Stebbins multiple times at the Executive Suites. Anchorage Police Department officers located Bender in the parking lot of a neighboring business with a cut on his hand and in possession of a small knife.

At sentencing, Judge Aarseth found that Bender belonged to the “worst type of offender” category, based on his lengthy criminal and institutional history. He also found that this offense was among the worst included in the definition of first-degree assault, due to the number of stab wounds and their location. Judge Aarseth imposed a sentence of 20 years, the maximum sentence for first-degree assault, and found that a maximum sentence was “not only appropriate, but necessary.”

Bender is in the custody of the Department of Corrections.