Nome was once known as the boneyard of the Bering Strait region. Visitors from surrounding villages died and disappeared so frequently that the FBI launched an investigation, concluding that many had succumbed to the bitter wind and cold after drinking. Today, something has changed. City officials said no one has died or gone missing in […]
Fighting a killer: How Nome built a safety net for drinkers
NOME — So many people died outdoors or vanished here that the FBI searched for signs of a serial killer. Hollywood made a movie blaming space aliens. The truth, federal investigators concluded, was simple and sad. People were coming to Nome and drinking too much, sometimes freezing to death in the wind and cold or […]
Voting on prohibition
The Inupiat village of Shishmaref is the latest Alaska town to face a thorny, high-stakes choice. Voters are expected decide in a city election Tuesday whether to lift a 30-year-old ban on alcohol. Here, three voters say why they’re voting wet or dry. “We need to train and raise our kids to be responsible because […]
Wet or dry? Shishmaref must make a choice
SHISHMAREF — Two skiffs are already anchored off the sandy tip of this arrow-thin island when 27-year-old Curtis Ray Nayokpuk, the last seal hunter to arrive, cuts the outboard on his boat. “What took you so long?” someone asks. “Traffic, man,” Nayokpuk replies. As his skiff bobs in the milky green inlet, half a dozen […]
Bars breaking badly: Police get closing-time fights on video
Hands in his pockets, the guy in the black hoodie never sees the punch coming. One right cross to the chin and he’s out cold in the snowy Legislative Information Office parking lot. Cut to the pavement in front of the Gaslight Lounge, yellow under the streetlights. A fall-down drunk backhands a cop. Across the […]
4 ideas for curbing drunken driving in Anchorage
Nick Hornshuh, 60, began tailing the Nissan on Sixth Avenue, looking for clues in the pre-dawn fog. The sedan drifted lazily between lanes, Hornshuh noted as he followed in an unmarked pickup. No turn signals. The car swerved and jerked, nearly missing an exit. Hornshuh, a volunteer, dialed 911. That call in mid-September marked […]
Inside the crash that killed Citari Townes-Sweatt
Citari Townes-Sweatt, 20, stopped home to change clothes after her shift at Costco. She picked out a cute brown-and-white dress, posted a selfie to Instagram and nibbled the steak her mother had made for her. Another warm, sunlit Saturday night began in Mountain View. Citari bounded down the apartment stairs and a friend drove her […]
‘I was so angry’
Lanita Sweatt-Sanders lost her daughter to a drunk driver on June 30, according to Anchorage police. The death of Citari Townes-Sweatt, 20, began a string of deadly DUI accidents in the city that sent police scrambling for solutions. Lanita last saw her daughter alive here in her Mountain View home. “Nothing prepares you for this. […]