A Houston man faces murder charges in the shooting death of another man Monday night in the small Matanuska-Susitna Borough community.<\/p>\n
Michael Pulliam, 72, appeared to have been drinking heavily prior to shooting Devin Blawat, 43, as a group of neighbors gathered at Pulliam\u2019s trailer to grill ribs, according to a charging document.<\/p>\n
Troopers responding to a 911 call a little after 9 p.m. Monday found a neighbor performing CPR on Blawat, who was declared dead soon after, according to the charges.<\/p>\n
On his person, Blawat had two throwing knives, a long knife in a vertical pocket and a utility knife clipped to the outside of his pants pocket, the charges say. The neighbors gave troopers a .40-caliber Glock 23 handgun that one of them had taken from Pulliam.<\/p>\n
\u201cMichael stated \u2018he hurt me\u2019 and that Devin \u2018started this\u2019 but could not explain further,\u201d a trooper wrote in the charges.<\/p>\n
Pulliam made inconsistent statements about what happened. At one point he told one of the neighbors Blawat had attacked him and that he had shot Blawat in self-defense but shortly thereafter seemed confused about who had shot Blawat, according to the charges.<\/p>\n
The neighbors told troopers Pulliam had been drunk and verbally abusive leading up to the shooting and that he had brandished the same gun about a month earlier during an argument. They were unaware of any dispute between the two men, the charges say.<\/p>\n
In an interview later at the nearest trooper post, Pulliam said he had consumed five Long Island Iced Teas \u2013 a mixture of five different kinds of liquor \u2013 as well as some vodka, the charges say.<\/p>\n
\u201cMichael stated at one point he shot Devin because he always messes with knives,\u201d the charges say. \u201cOne minute he admitted to shooting Devin then the next he did not know what happened. When asked if he believed his intoxication was a factor in what happened he said no.\u201d<\/p>\n
The troopers noticed several cuts on Pulliam\u2019s hands, which \u201cmight have been caused when Devin possibly cut his hands with the knives he often played with,\u201d the charges say.<\/p>\n
The troopers arrested Pulliam, and a judge set his bail at $400,000, according to court records. He remained jailed in Palmer as of Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Houston man faces murder charges in the shooting death of another man Monday night in the small…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":438240,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":["post-438239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438239\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/438240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}