By SUZANNE DOWNING
An Eagle River man has been sentenced to more than 16 years in prison for a brutal domestic violence assault that left his girlfriend unconscious and severely injured after she called police seeking help to leave their shared home.
Superior Court Judge Jack McKenna sentenced Karl Marx Thomas, 41, to 15 years in prison for a December 2023 assault in which he strangled his girlfriend to the point of unconsciousness. During the attack, Thomas caused an orbital hemorrhage, broke her nose, and inflicted more than 50 other injuries documented by forensic nurses.
An Anchorage jury convicted Thomas in June of Assault in the First Degree, Assault in the Second Degree, two counts of Assault in the Third Degree, and two counts of Assault in the Fourth Degree.
At the time of the assault, Thomas was on probation in a separate case involving similar conduct against a different live-in girlfriend. Judge McKenna revoked Thomas’s probation in that earlier case and imposed the remaining 16 months of jail time.
In total, Thomas was sentenced to 16 years and four months in prison. None of the sentence was suspended.
Following his conviction in June, Thomas was immediately remanded into custody.
The case was investigated by the Anchorage Police Department’s Domestic Violence Unit.
