This week’s segment focuses on a recent opinion issued by the Alaska Supreme Court on whether a police officer and the municipality can be sued for some conduct, such as tasering an 11-year old child.
Public Safety
Heating oil theft on the rise
At least $10,000 worth of heating oil has been stolen from Juneau homes so far this year. Since January, Juneau police say there’s been nearly twice the number of thefts than were reported for all of 2010. The latest was for $200 in oil stolen from a tank at the back of a Lemon Creek…
NTSB investigators review recent crash data
The wreckage of a single-engine plane that crashed July 24th on Douglas Island rests in a Juneau hangar. A National Transportation Safety Board crew is piecing the aircraft together for the investigation into the accident that killed Charles Luck and his wife Liping Tang-Luck. The NTSB preliminary report indicates the plane crashed very shortly after…
Services scheduled for Kevin Thornton
Services are planned this week for a young Juneau man who died recently in Arkansas from injuries suffered in a random assault. A Rosary will be said for Kevin Thornton on Monday, Aug 8th, at 7 p.m., at St. Paul’s Catholic Church in the Mendenhall Valley. A funeral Mass is Tuesday, Aug 9th, at 7…
Prosecutors drop sex abuse charges against former officer, file new charge of interfering with a witness
A former Juneau police officer initially accused of sexual abuse of a minor could still face as much as two years in prison. Prosecutors dropped the three felony abuse charges on Friday, just before Brian Ervin’s jury trial was to start on Monday, August 8th. But the 38-year old former downtown officer pled “no contest”…
Girl reports false abduction, sexual assault
Juneau Police say an 18-year-old woman made up a story about being abducted and sexually assaulted because she was having problems in her personal life. At about 2:45 last Saturday morning, the woman’s mother called police saying her daughter had reported being abducted at knifepoint by three men. The girl said she was taken to…
Searchers find body of missing man in Herbert River
The man found dead Tuesday from an apparent fall on the Herbert Glacier Trail was a nursing supervisor at Bartlett Regional Hospital. Forty-two year old James “Steven” Reese had worked at the hospital about ten years. Bartlett Spokesman Jim Strader says he was popular with both patients and staff, and the whole hospital is shaken…
Murkowski aide resigns, plans to plead guilty to fishing violation
A former congressional aide may spend as much as ten months in prison for a fishing violation while was a member of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council. Arne Fuglvog submitted his resignation Sunday as fisheries aide to Senator Lisa Murkowski. In a statement, Murkowski thanked Fuglvog for his years of service and said he…
Kevin Thornton death unfolds
Like Juneau, a small Arkansas town is trying to make sense of the death of a 19-year-old Juneau man who was allegedly beaten by four teenage boys while he was visiting their community. As previously reported, Kevin Thornton died from his injuries Wednesday in a Little Rock Hospital, where’d been in a coma for a…
Courtwatch – Life in prison with no parole
Local attorney Jack McGee reviews a case of a 14 year old boy originally convicted of murder who lost an appeal before the Wisconsin Supreme Court for his sentence of life in prison with no parole.