By Kirsten Swann

Dorothy Savage was recovering from a broken femur in an Anchorage assisted living home when she got the call from a local hospital: Her son, 37-year-old Michael Hogan, was in critical condition after a shooting near Merrill Field Monday night.

Savage said hospital staff told her they needed to place a central line; that her son had suffered a bullet wound to his neck. She felt “absolute terror.”

The Anchorage Police Department said Hogan had been found, gravely injured, near the intersection of E. 4th Avenue and Reeve Boulevard. A caller in the parking lot of the nearby Taco Bell reported hearing a gunshot shortly before 9:30 p.m., and police later announced they were searching for two men last seen driving an SUV. One of the men allegedly approached Hogan, demanded money then shot him. There were no arrests as of Tuesday morning, according to APD.

Tuesday afternoon, Hogan’s mother prepared to visit him at the hospital and hoped she wouldn’t have to say goodbye to another son.

Last spring, she mourned the death of her youngest. Karl Cox Jr. was 28 when he passed away in a van parked behind a Japanese restaurant on Tudor Road. He was living in the van, his mother said, and he kept it warm with a little stove that set the whole thing on fire one evening in May 2013.

At the time, Hogan was tied up with the law. He spent more than a decade in and out of the court system on charges ranging from vehicle theft to criminal mischief. But things seemed to be turning around. Up until Monday, his mother said he came to visit her at the assisted living home two or three times a week. His stepbrother, Everett Savage Jr., said Hogan was working a steady job and was recently off probation. Then he got shot.

It almost seems like Anchorage is cursed for the family from Ketchikan, Everett Savage Jr. said. Police said the shooting remains under investigation. Hogan remains hospitalized in serious condition, and Dorothy Savage said she still can’t really believe what happened.

“I just lost a son a year ago up here,” she said.