Alaska Public Media

Two teenagers were killed over the weekend in separate shooting incidents in Anchorage.

At about 2 a.m. Saturday, Anchorage Police Department were notified that Elijah Zeller, 18, was dropped off at an area hospital with a gunshot wound.
Zeller was pronounced dead at the hospital. APD is investigating Zeller’s death as a homicide.

Officers responded to the weekend’s second fatal shooting just after 2 a.m. Sunday, after receiving a call of shots fired near the intersection of 4th Avenue and Newell Street.

APD officers discovered Xeryus Tate, 17, dead in the street.

Anchorage Police said the shooting does not appear to be random.

Zeller’s and Tate’s next of kin have been notified.

No arrests have been made in either case.

Sunday’s homicide was Anchorage’s fourth in five days.

A man was found dead in an apparent homicide early Friday morning on Anchorage’s east side.

Anchorage police responded to a report of shots fired near Duben Avenue and Bolin Street just after 3 a.m. and found a deceased male in the street.

According to an Anchorage Police Department release, police are investigating the death as a homicide and no suspects are in custody at this time.

The victim has not been positively identified.

News release: Police Investigating Homicide Near Duben Ave/Bolin St

People with drug felonies can now apply for food stamps in Alaska.

With the signing of Senate Bill 91, the state’s criminal justice reform bill, the state partially opted-out of the 1996 federally-imposed lifetime ban.

Individuals can now apply, but they have to prove that they are complying with parole and substance abuse treatment requirements.

“Your uncle?” she asked one of the clients as he looked through a box of socks. “What about your uncle? He need a pair, too? Well, take two pair.”

She used to be on the other side of that door. Mack said she spent about six years hanging out at Bean’s and the Brother Francis Shelter when she was fighting a nearly four-decade-long drug addiction.

“Started as a kid taking speed,” she said. “No one wants to be fat, you know. So I was on that. Body image. I was anorexic, I went through it all.”

Eventually she started using harder drugs because she wanted to fit in, “Everyone was doing it.”

About 20 years ago, “police busted me for having drugs on me. I went to jail, did my little time, came out, and I couldn’t eat because they wouldn’t give me food stamps because I was a drug-related felon.”

She said she was homeless, vulnerable, and didn’t have anywhere to turn. And she was angry.

“You know, people can go kill people, rape kids — and eat. Have a few drugs on you, you have to go hungry? It’s ridiculous.”

The ban was part of President Bill Clinton’s War on Drugs and quickly passed Congress. Anyone convicted of a state or federal drug felony after August 22, 1996 would have a lifetime ban on receiving food stamps, now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. States could opt out of the ban and most already have.

Now, that ban has been partially lifted in Alaska. People with drug felonies can apply for the program, but they have to prove that they are complying with parole requirements and substance abuse treatment plans.

That’s sometimes easier said than done, said Cara Durr with the Food Bank of Alaska.

“You know if this is something that’s happened 10 or 15 years ago, it’s not going to be as easy as someone who has just been released,” she said. It’s also harder for people who have felonies out of state.

Food Bank will work with people to help them provide the necessary proof because food assistance can help them become more stable and reduce recidivism, Durr said.

“People who are coming out of incarceration are often some of the most vulnerable people,” she said. “They’re just trying to get back on their feet. And if we’re withholding food assistance from them, it’s not helping them to really do that.”

It’s unclear how many people in Alaska will be affected by the change in the law because people come and go from the state, but nearly 175 people with state and federal drug felonies have been released from prison in Alaska so far this year and can now apply.

According to the Marshall Project, only four states still have complete bans in place: Mississippi, South Carolina, West Virginia and Wyoming. Georgia partially lifted the ban there earlier this year.

For Ivory Mack, it was too late for the change to help her. She said she would only receive about $20 a month and with adverse health conditions, it would be hard for her to get to the public assistance office and complete the interview to apply. She gets by on her modest income and a couple of meals from Bean’s while she’s down there working.

It feels good to be giving back to the place that helped her make it through, Mack said. “I like it because I get to see people, and I feel like I’m a good example to them. If I can do it, anyone can do it.”

Mack said she’s been clean for three years now, and she’s hoping access to food stamps can help some of her friends get clean, too.

A Washington Post reporter at the heart of a high-profile campaign incident grew up in Alaska and graduated from an Anchorage high school.

Jose DelReal grew up in Anchorage and graduated from East High School in 2009.

The Washington Post’s style section reports that DelReal was blocked Wednesday from covering a campaign event for Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence in Wisconsin.

DelReal has covered Donald Trump’s presidential campaign for more than a year, but been denied media credentials in recent months.

According to the Post, after being turned down for credentials at the Pence event DelReal was told by a private security guard he couldn’t enter through general admissions with his laptop and phone.

After leaving the items in his car, DelReal was subsequently patted down by two sheriff’s deputies, and was eventually escorted off the premises without being allowed to talk to campaign representatives.

He declined an interview request for this story.

Anchorage’s homeless shelters and social services are drastically and unexpectedly overwhelmed as a consequence of a shifting policy pushing people out of homeless camps.

Summer is usually a relatively quiet time for direct service providers working with the city’s homeless population. Typically people are living in camps or doing seasonal work, according to Lisa Aquino, the executive director of Catholic Social Services, which oversees the Brother Francis Shelter in downtown Anchorage. This summer the shelter has consistently been at maximum capacity.

“Almost every day there’s 240 people inside,” Aquino said.

That number doesn’t include the 50 to 70 people a night the shelter can’t accommodate, who have been sleeping outside.

Aquino was one of three social service providers to testify before the Anchorage Assembly’s committee on homelessness Wednesday. They all said they are seeing the same large influx of people in need of help, taxing staff, and making it hard to keep up with even basic things, like serve enough food during meal-times.

Part of the reason is growing pressure on unsanctioned camps in parks and along trails throughout the city.

“There’s been a real concerted effort by the municipality, by the police department, to crack down on camps,” Aquino said. “They’re letting people know to leave camps and that they should come down to Brother Francis Shelter and Beans Cafe and connect with services.”

The dry conditions and elevated fire dangers are other factors driving the crackdown on camps. Multiple fires within the municipality have broken out this summer, with at least one blamed on homeless campers.

Lisa Sauder, the director of Beans Cafe, told the committee the situation is creating new problems, like people coming to the campus with all their possessions. Without campsites, people have nowhere to store their things. Sauder explained Beans has freed up a portion of storage space so people can secure their belongings while they get food.

Service providers also say they are also seeing a higher volume of people coming to the facilities.  Covenant House Executive Director Alison Kear said in 20 years of work she’d never seen so many people arriving during the summer, including a drastic uptick in minors between the ages of 14 and 16-years-old. Aquina with BFS said they’re seeing more and more senior citizens coming into the system for the first time.

Assembly member Bill Evans chairs the committees on homelessness and public safety. He said during a short interview, the point of the city’s focus on driving homeless individuals out of camp sites is intended to “consolidate” people around social services.

However, without sufficient housing options brought online yet under the city’s broader Housing First strategy, it has created an unforeseen short-term problem.

“Between now and then, unfortunately, there’s no quick fix,” Evans said. “We have a long-term program in place that we think will address this, it’s going to be difficult this summer, it’s going to be difficult for about a year now. But things are looking up in the sense we have new grants in that I think will curb this in the long run.”

Evans hopes that 30 to 50 housing vouchers will become available soon, taking some of the pressure off the service providers in the area.

Meanwhile, the agencies said they barely have enough resources to keep up with a problem nobody saw coming, and that they expect it to last for weeks.

The Republican National Convention ended Thursday in Cleveland with a big speech  by the party’s presidential nominee, Donald Trump. Of course, Trump wasn’t Alaska’s first choice. Ted Cruz won the state’s GOP vote in March. Are they lining up behind the nominee? Yes. Mostly.

John Moller of Juneau is a Cruz delegate. Going into the convention, he wasn’t sure he could fully back Trump. But Moller says that changed.

“It was a gradual migration, but (I’m) 100 percent on board now,” he says.

As the convention progressed, Moller says he got a better feel for who Trump is. That was one piece of his conversion.

“The importance of unity in our party is critical. That helped me get a little closer,” he said. “And just the events and the speakers, including Mr. Trump,  over the course of the last three days has helped me get there.”

Here’s a sign that his transformation  is complete: Moller says he’s “extremely disappointed” Cruz blew the opportunity to endorse Trump from the convention stage Wednesday night. Instead, Cruz urged people to “vote your conscience,” which drew loud boos.

Judy Eledge of Anchorage was an ardent Cruz champion, but is now on board the Trump train, too. She’s of two minds when it comes to Cruz’s non-endorsement. It makes sense, Eledge says, after all the insults Trump hurled earlier in the campaign.

“But I wish he would have at least said, ‘I’m going to support the Republican nominee.’ But he didn’t,” Eledge says. “And to me, Mr. Cruz is a man of principles. He’s not going to endorse someone who has talked about his father, his mother. He’s just not going to do it.”

Even on the final day of the convention, some of the Alaskans still wrestled with their doubts about Trump.

“I just don’t see him as a consistent, conservative-type candidate. I think he would have been a fantastic candidate for the Democrat party,” said Jesse Clutts of Anchor Point. He sounds like a guy still hoping for another option, because he knows for sure he won’t vote for Hillary Clinton.

“If you buy into that there’s only two people that you have a choice of, then I’m going to pull the lever for Donald Trump,” he said.

Is he convinced those are his only options? The question drew a resigned sigh.

“That seems to be the case,” he said.

And then there are those who embraced Trump from the get-go. Like delegate Doyle Holmes of Willow. He was on the convention floor for the dramatic Cruz speech. Holmes says Cruz seemed to be building to a big endorsement.

“And I thought he’s going to do it. And then he didn’t. And he actually went ahead and said the final words of his speech,” Holmes said. “That’s when the ‘boo’ came and it was very loud. That was a boo heard around the world last night. I’ll guarantee you.”

Holmes says he booed, too.

The Cruz speech was the low point of the convention for Holmes. His high point? Snapping a photo of a favorite celebrity: Fox News host Megyn Kelly.