Alaska Bartender Kicked Out Customer to Protect Coworker From Harassment. Months Later, He’s Found Dead

Zachariah Hobbs, an Alaska bartender and father of five, is being remembered by family as “exuberant and outgoing” and a man who “was always happy,” days after he was allegedly murdered by a former bar patron he once kicked out for harassing a coworker.

“Anybody that [knew] Zachariah knows that he was a world inside of a person,” his brother Aram Hobbs told local KTUU in Alaska. “He always ended every sentence with a chuckle. He was always happy.”

Hobbs was shot and killed Wednesday, Jan. 15, outside of Midnite Mine, the bar where he worked. He was 43 years old.

The Fairbanks Police Department announced the following day that Derrick Dewatne McCormick Jr. had been arrested and charged with his murder.

McCormick, who turned 22 on Monday, is being held on a $2 million bond.

The Fairbanks Police Department said a female employee at Midnite Mine heard a gunshot outside and found Hobbs lying wounded on the ground and saw someone running away from the scene.

Soon after, a man called 911 to report the shooting and “provided several pieces of false information including his name, birthdate, phone number from which he was calling, as well as conflicting statements about what he had witnessed of the shooting and his current location.

The 911 dispatcher was “suspicious” about the caller, according to police, logging his location, which police later used to track down McCormick.

The female employee then recognized McCormick as a recent patron whom Hobbs had kicked out for harassing her months earlier.

“At the time, McCormick had threatened to come back with a firearm,” the Fairbanks Police Department said in a statement. “He also attempted to sneak back in that same night.”

The police allege that the female employee later ran into McCormick at another local restaurant where he turned out to be a cook, becoming uncomfortable as he allegedly stared at her, leading her to cancel her order and leave the restaurant.

“She reported that he followed her into the parking lot to her car and was verbally accosting her,” Fairbanks Police said in its statement.

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Security video from the night of the shooting allegedly showed McCormick lingering around the parking lot and “repeatedly going near the female employee’s vehicle” before Hobbs and McCormick appear to get into an altercation, leading to Hobbs getting shot, according to Fairbanks police.

A GoFundMe set up to provide assistance for Hobbs’ family had raised more than $29,000 as of Monday.

“Zachariah Hobbs was murdered while he [was] doing what he did best, selflessly protecting the people he loved,” the fundraiser says. “Zachariah had an insane work ethic & was investing his time & money getting a snow removal company running in addition to working at the Midnite Mine. This leaves very little financially for his 5 children that no longer have their father.”