Spenard liquor store must stop selling alcohol for one week as punishment for selling to an underage buyer, state regulators decided Wednesday. The Alcoholic Beverage Control Board voted 3-2 to fine In & Out Wine $500 and yank its liquor license for seven days, with 38 days suspended. The owner of the Spenard business, formerly […]

In a small house in the middle of this oil-rich whaling town lives a former bootlegger and drug dealer. He stopped selling illegal booze sometime last summer, yet hopeful buyers still knock at the door all night looking for a jug. “I could have sold 10 bottles last night. People […]

Although alcohol sales are banned in Barrow, thousands of pounds of alcohol legally arrive every month at a city distribution center. That’s because voters elected in 1997 to go “damp,” meaning a limited amount of booze can be shipped to Barrow by holders of city-issued permits approved by the borough police department. Each […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Twenty-five years ago, the Daily News sent a handful of reporters to rural Alaska to investigate the surprisingly high death rates of young Alaska Natives. As they talked to people — from village residents to health officials to law enforcement agents — they quickly saw the outline of what was in fact a statewide epidemic […]