Daniel Rocero on the left and his victim Keenan Wegener on the right. (Anchorage Police Department; obituary)
An Alaskan man was recently convicted of his involvement in the murder of another man found in a shopping container in a garage last year.
Daniel Alex Rocero, 46, has been convicted of two counts of second-degree murder, one count of manslaughter and one count of tampering with evidence in the killing of 27-year-old Keenan Wegener and hiding his body, law enforcement officials said Wednesday.
Wegener was a member of the libertarian service organization Students for Liberty while attending George Washington University. His comrades remembered him as “the friendliest person you have ever known” and as a “very outgoing guy”.
“I remember being stuck at the airport after a retreat, fooling around and hanging out with him and a bunch of Floridians while we all prepared for the trip home. It was his final retreat at SFL as he graduated in 2018. But I always thought I would see him and some of the other Alaskans again one day, although I doubted his insistence that Kenai was the best part of Alaska. Keenan was a great personality who we will forever miss,” read a eulogy on the group’s website. “During his time in the SFL, Keenan’s kindness was reflected in his actions. He has always been interested in demonstrating the power of volunteering by caring about our local communities. Thanks to his enthusiasm and efforts, SFL later organized a day of service where ten cities across North America provided food and clothing to hundreds of homeless people.”
Wegener’s obituary remembers him as a man with deep roots in his native Alaska and later Virginia after moving to school.
According to the Anchorage Daily News, the victim was wearing an ankle monitor as part of bail conditions at the time of his death after being accused of a burglary.
Two officers from the Pretrial Enforcement Division contacted the Anchorage Police Department on March 20, 2022, asking for help locating Wegener because his ankle monitor hadn’t moved for two days, an affidavit of arrest said. From the start, one of the PED officers feared the worst, having had clients in the past whose ankle monitors also didn’t move for days, only to later discover they had “died of a medical emergency,” the affidavit said .
After pinging the ankle monitor and hearing the device, officers spoke to the owner of the apartment and explained the situation to him, the affidavit said. Another woman at the home asked police to “obtain a search warrant,” but the property owner “told officers there was a rear internal staircase that would allow them access to the basement area of the home,” according to the court document.
After police went through the apartment building, they found the garage blocked by a toolbox, the affidavit said. After removing the tool box, they entered the garage and noticed a white sheet that “covered part of the garage and blocked the view of that area.” Wegener’s body lay behind the sheet, “in a large tote bag on the floor,” and had “blood and lacerations to the face.”
In a resulting investigation, the property owner told police that two days earlier, a man named Happy and another man named Adam Pringle confronted the victim about an incident, the affidavit said. The woman said the three went downstairs, “and she heard loud shouting and arguing and banged on the wall for them [to] Be calm,” the document said.
At one point, the woman told police Pringle and Happy came upstairs. The two men had argued over what to do with the victim of the violence, she said. Pringle allegedly said he knocked Wegener unconscious – and asked the woman to provide medical attention because she was a nurse. Happy reportedly said Wegener wasn’t breathing and told them to call 911. Pringle then allegedly countered, saying Wegener was breathing — and it would be “everything fine.”
Apparently neither option was used. The woman said she had never walked down the stairs. When she revealed that story to police, she expressed “extreme fear” for Happy and Pringle, the affidavit reads, “suggesting that she feared for her life when they found out she had spoken to police.” “
The man known as “Happy” turned out to be Rocero – who the nurse later singled out from a series of photos. Both men were charged in Wegener’s death on March 31, 2022. Pringle’s trial on the same charges is ongoing, authorities said.
Rocero’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for September 21 before Anchorage Superior Court Judge Peter Ramgren. He faces a minimum sentence of 15 years and a maximum of 99 years in prison.
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