Community

Juneau police are looking for a man and a gun allegedly used in an assault and robbery earlier this week in the Costco parking lot.

One man is in custody for the New Year’s Day incident in which a 20-year-old man was reportedly stunned by a taser, punched and robbed.

Twenty-nine-year old Dustin Daley has been jailed on charges of 1^st degree robbery, two counts of 4^th degree assault and one count of theft in the 3^rd degree.

Police are still looking for another man, who was reportedly wearing a dark hooded sweatshirt, a black mask with the skull on it, and had a handgun.

Police say Daley and the unidentified man were in a four-door silver Dodge pickup with a broken driver’s side window covered in plastic. Police later found the truck and Daley as well as a Crown Royal bag containing what may be heroin, a white powder that may be another illegal drug, a marijuana pipe and marijuana.  The mask was also recovered from the pickup.

Police did not release any information about the incident until Friday.  They are asking for assistance in identifying the man with Daley.

They say anyone with information should log onto the Juneau Crime Line website and report their tip.

At least one black bear in the Juneau area is having a hard time falling asleep this winter.

The bear was a frequent visitor to the downtown area in December, and was even seen near the Governor’s Mansion on Thursday.

Pat Race lives on Goldbelt Avenue up the hill from the mansion. He was walking home late that night when his girlfriend called to let him know a bear was in the driveway.

“So I made a lot of noise coming up the driveway, and he poked his head up, and I kind of moseyed on around the long way and got to sneak in around him,” Race says with a laugh. “But yeah, it’s just unexpected to see a bear this time of year.”

Race says the bear broke into their garbage shed, opened their bear-resistant garbage can, and made off with a couple trash bags.

His girlfriend, Marian Call, posted about the incident on Twitter.

Just watched the most amazing standoff btw @alaskarobotics & giant black bear in my driveway. Theme from Good the Bad & the Ugly in my head.

— Marian Call (@mariancall) January 3, 2014

The bear stood all the way up on its hind legs. He was immensely tall. They look so much like people. Spectacular to see up close.

— Marian Call (@mariancall) January 3, 2014

Bear ultimately walked away looking incredible like bears do, so Pat could come in the house. Watching from the window made my heart pound.

— Marian Call (@mariancall) January 3, 2014

Race says it’s not the first time they or their friends have encountered Juneau’s winter bear.

“We have a friend, Christine, who just ran into probably the same bear the other day, and I think she was caught a little more off guard,” he says. “A few weeks ago we were walking home and the bear kind of growled at us from up in the woods. We didn’t see it that night, but it was sort of was warning us that it was there.”

Alaska Department of Fish & Game Area Management Biologist Ryan Scott says he’s surprised by the bear’s seeming reluctance to hibernate.

“Yeah, it’s January,” Scott says. “It’s common for us to hear about bears sporadically through the winter time. But to have a bear that appears to be just kind of active and at a normal activity level in January – even, this year has been a little bit out of whack having bears well into December like that running around the urban areas – yeah, it’s surprising.”

While the behavior is unusual, Scott says he’s confident he knows what’s causing it.

“It’s all food related,” he says. “And there’s two ways to look at that, I think. One, this particular bear likely was not energetically prepared to go to hibernation, to den up. The flip side of that is, if there’s food available to a bear, it’s not going to feel the push to go. And that food, this time of year, is human produced food. Garbage or scraps or whatever it might be.”

Even though it’s January, Scott says downtown Juneau residents need to be vigilant about securing their garbage and not leaving anything outdoors that might attract bears.

“Try to get into that frame of mind that we all are in during bear season so to speak,” Scott says.

Two summers ago, Race shot a viral video of a bear that climbed onto the roof of his old apartment building. That bear had become too used to getting food from people, and had to be euthanized. Race says he hopes that won’t be the case for the bear he saw the other night.

“You know, it’s unexpected this time of year, but that’s what’s probably going to happen with this guy if people don’t keep their garbage inside and stop giving him an excuse to nose around,” Race says.

After 35 years with the U.S. Forest Service, Juneau District Ranger Marti Marshall is retiring Friday.

She says January is a good time to step down and embark on other adventures from the work that has encompassed  “all my dream factors in a job, including wilderness, outfitter guide issues, tourism, recreation.”

Marshall began her adventures with the U.S. Forest Service as a firefighter in Fish Lake National Forest in Utah.

“This was the late ’70s and it was a really interesting job because they weren’t really ready to have women in the workforce, but they were doing it,” she says.

She went on to Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area as a backcountry ranger. Marshall says she grew up in that job and over the next 30-plus years bounced between the Pacific Northwest Region and the Tongass National Forest. She’s worked in regional offices and out in the field.

“And I think that’s worked really well for me, because I know what they do upstairs now,” she says, with a laugh. 

Marshall’s Forest Service career included 13 years in the Sitka Ranger district, but her first job in Alaska was in Juneau as a recreation technician “in charge of campgrounds, cabins, trails, roads, facilities, just kind of the do-all recreation person.”

About four years ago, she came back to Juneau as ranger for Admiralty Island National Monument. When long-time district ranger Pete Griffin retired, she applied for that job.

She calls it the hardest and best of her Forest Service career.

Marshall has shared the district with Chad Van Ormer, now Admiralty Monument ranger, who will be interim district ranger until Brad Orr takes over on February 24th.  Orr comes from the Sulphur Ranger District  in Colorado’s Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forest.

According to Marshall, Orr’s experience will fit well in the Juneau Ranger District.

“He’s got a great background in a really big recreation district with marinas, concession campgrounds, a ski area, four wildernesses, a lot of recreation, special use permits,” she says.  “I’m curious to see what he’ll think coming to Juneau Ranger District, because we think we’re overwhelmed with use and recreation issues.”

Like all Forest Service budgets, the district is facing major cuts. Marshall says 2014 will be a telling year for the Juneau Ranger District:.

“This coming year, recreation is down 14 percent,  our facilities money is, I think, down 24 percent, trails is down slightly, maybe  5 or 7 percent. But the demands don’t stop just because our budget goes down,” she says. “We’re all a little stunned with the budget.”

Orr will face other revenue issues, including managing fees. For example, entrance  fees to  the Mendenhall Glacier Visitors Center have not gone up since 1999, when they were first established.  Marshall says fees also need to increase for district cabin use.

While the budget is going down, with all its ramifications, the commitment by the district staff hasn’t, Marshall says.  She is leaving a group of people she calls “amazing, phenomenal.”  She says her successor will benefit from all their experience and their ability to work together to manage the largest ranger district in the nation.

Jeshua Raymond Moreno was delivered by C-section at Bartlett Regional Hospital. He’s the third child of Elizabeth and John Moreno.

“He was 9 pounds, one ounce and a half, 21 and ¾ inches, and he’s a beautiful baby boy,” said the father.

John Moreno says his wife was supposed to go in for the C-section on December 31st, but it was rescheduled for today because of a requirement that the surgery take place after at least 39 weeks of pregnancy.

He says everybody is doing great, but they’re not really sure how to feel about having the first baby born in Juneau this year.

“I think we’re really concentrating on having a new baby instead of the time of the year,” Moreno said. “But it’s good to be a father again.”

Moreno says older brother, John, and older sister, Ina Mae, both had an opportunity to hold Jeshua shortly after he was born, and they both love their new baby brother.

Flu shots in Alaska public health clinics will be free through March.

While the vaccine itself is free to some Alaskans, they are still required to pay a $28 administrative fee.  That fee will now be waived.

Spokesman Greg Wilkinson says the state Division of Public Health hopes it will encourage more people to get immunized. He outlines who is eligible:

“State supplied flu vaccine is available to children under the age of 3 and anyone who’s 3 and over that doesn’t have health insurance, who’s health insurance doesn’t cover vaccines, who has insurance but they haven’t met their deductible for vaccination coverage, if they don’t know if their health insurance covers vaccinations or not, or if they just have nowhere else to go in the community to receive the vaccine, they can come to a public health center,” Wilkinson says.

Both shots and the nasal spray vaccine are available at any of the state’s 22 clinics, including Juneau, and at other health centers that receive state grants.

At the end of December, 242 cases of the flu cases had been reported statewide.  While Wilkinson says that’s similar to years’ past, flu season didn’t really start in Alaska until December.

He says two adults have died from the flu.

Until Dec. 29^th, Alaska health care providers were required to only report children’s deaths to the state from the flu.  Now they must report adult flu deaths to state public health. Before the regulations changed, Wilkinson says adult flu statistics were  lumped in with pneumonia.

“So if you looked at death statistics on our website you would only see people who have died from what they call PNI, or pneumonia and influenza. What this will do now, is this requires health providers to report any adult who dies from influenza, and whether that’s they’ve had a lab confirmed case of influences, a rapid test confirmed case or influenza or the clinical diagnosis is influenza,” Wilkinson says.

The current strain is H1N1, also called swine flu.  Wilkinson says so far, no children have died in Alaska from the flu.

Update 6:48 p.m.:

Mary Breffeilh says her dog Gizmo has been found. She attributes friends and Facebook for getting the word out and connecting the right people.

The original story has been updated to correct the spelling of dog owner’s last name. It’s Breffeilh, not Bresel.

Corrected original story:

Mary Breffeilh is looking for her lost 16-week-old mixed black lab puppy.

Breffeilh says the male dog was not wearing a collar and was last seen around 9:30 this morning near River Road and Whitewater Court, which is off Back Loop Road. She says she has paperwork to show she is the rightful owner.

You can contact her at 209-2979.