Public Safety

Juneau police say DNA has identified human remains found in the Gastineau Channel more than 20 years ago. The State Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed Thursday they are the remains of  Darryl Bruce Fawcett, who has been missing since 1999. 

Fawcett was homeless in Juneau when he stopped contacting his family in September of 1999, according to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System or NamUs. 

In 2004, a diver found human remains 83 feet underwater near Juneau’s downtown cruise docks and Merchant’s Wharf, according to a JPD release. The remains have been in the State Medical Examiner’s Office since, but could not be identified with the available technology.

The release says that in July, the medical examiner’s office began using new technology that can extract DNA profiles from bones and teeth. This allowed Fawcett to be identified. 

NamUs shows four other sets of unidentified human remains found in Juneau between 2001 and 2017.

Fawcett was 28 years old when he was reported missing. Police say his family has been notified.

A Juneau man was medevaced to Seattle this week after being slammed to the ground by a Juneau police officer. 

According to a press release from the department Thursday afternoon, the incident took place Wednesday evening. Police say the man is 49 years old, but did not name him.

According to the department, the incident took place after officers responded to a report of a woman fighting with a man outside of the Douglas Library. It says the woman threw water in the man’s face and made racial comments. 

According to police, an officer was attempting to place her under arrest and into a vehicle when a friend of hers appeared and continued to yell at the man. Police say the man then aggressively approached an officer. 

Police say the officer attempted to place the man under arrest and into handcuffs, but he resisted and was “taken to the ground.”

A video of the incident has circulated online. It shows an officer arresting a woman, before panning to a man and another officer in front of a vehicle. 

The officer stands behind the man who is leaning over the vehicle. After a few seconds, it appears the officer wraps both arms around the man and slams them both to the ground. The video shows the man’s head hitting the concrete sidewalk. He remains there unmoving for the duration of the video. 

Police say the man was initially brought to Bartlett Regional Hospital with a head injury before being transported to Seattle. Police did not share the man’s current condition.

The department did not immediately respond to requests for more information. According to police, the incident is currently under investigation. 

Content warning: This article includes mentions of sexual assault and abuse that may be uncomfortable for some readers. Resources are available at the bottom of this post.

After 10 days of jury selection, lawyers read opening statements Tuesday in the trial of a former Juneau chiropractor arrested four years ago on multiple sexual assault charges. Jeffrey Fultz is accused of assaulting more than a dozen women under the guise of medical care while he worked at Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium.

While the charges against Fultz have been public for years, this was the first chance to hear from his defense.

One of Fultz’s defense attorneys, Wally Tetlow, opened with arguments that Fultz provided legitimate care to the witnesses.

“The evidence in the case is going to show that during legitimate medical treatment, Dr. Fultz did make contact with sensitive areas of the body, but he did not make any contact with sensitive areas of the body without consent,” Tetlow said.

He said while the women accusing Fultz of assault may have been uncomfortable during their treatment, that does not mean he committed assault. 

He also argued the investigating officer Daniel Darbonne — a former Juneau Police officer who died in 2023 — told women they were assaulted without reviewing the medical records himself.

“They didn’t know at all whether it’s legitimate medical treatment or not, but it was,” he said. “But Darbonne tells them it’s not, and they believe him.”

The defense attorney ended with a plea to the jury. 

“At conclusion of the evidence in this case, we’re going to ask you to find Mr. Fultz not guilty on all of the charges,” he said.

The Fultz trial comes after years of delays, and will decide whether he perpetrated the crimes more than a dozen Juneau women accuse him of. He could face years in prison.

Judge Larry Woolford read instructions to the 16 jurors seated.

“This is a criminal trial, and the fundamental obligation of jurors in a criminal trial is to apply the presumption of innocence and the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” he said. “The defendant, although accused of a crime, begins trial with a clean slate with no evidence favoring conviction.”

State prosecutor Jessalyn Gillum opened the state’s case against Fultz by outlining what he’s accused of. 

“We are here because the defendant engaged in sexual contact with his patients under the guise of legitimate medical treatment,” she said. “He violated their trust and he violated their bodies. ” 

She read the list of witnesses and what they sought treatment for in chronological order, beginning with when they started treatment. 

“Upon these allegations becoming public, additional women stepped forward,” Gillum said.

Gillum outlined what witnesses will say: women who sought care for injuries in their hands and arms would find Fultz spending extensive time on their buttocks and breasts. In some instances, they claim he touched their vaginas. They said that Fultz didn’t leave the room when women undressed and that he ignored “no” and dismissed uncertainty from his patients. 

The jury will hear from expert witnesses and alleged victims in the coming days. The trial is expected to last for at least another two weeks.

The Indian Health Services established a hotline for callers to report suspected child abuse or sexual abuse by calling 1-855-SAFE-IHS (855-723-3447) or submitting a complaint online on the IHS.gov website. The hotline may be used to report any type of suspected child abuse within the IHS, or any type of sexual abuse regardless of the age of the victim. The person reporting by phone or online may remain anonymous.

Locally, people can call AWARE in Juneau at 907-586-1090.

A tsunami advisory was lifted for the Aleutians and the Pribilof Islands Wednesday morning, after one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded struck off the coast of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula at about 3:25 p.m. Alaska time.

The magnitude 8.8 earthquake sparked tsunami warnings across the Pacific and sent a series of waves to the coastlines of several states and countries, including Japan and Russia, where damage was reported.

The largest wave in Alaska, at 2.7 feet, hit Adak Island at 11:21 Tuesday night, according to the U.S. Tsunami Warning System, which is part of the National Weather Service.

Adak City Manager Breck Craig and most of the community of about 50 people gathered to wait for the wave at the Bering Hill Chapel on Tuesday evening. A wave was forecasted to arrive at 5:40 p.m., but Craig said he saw no sign of one. He said people cleared out around 7 p.m.

“Everybody still went home and loaded up their trucks and gassed up their vehicles and got their generators gassed up, and we were all ready, in case, you know something happened,” Craig said Wednesday morning.

He said he didn’t get much sleep Tuesday night.

“I slept in my clothes like everybody else in town, I think, did,” Craig said.

Craig said people in Adak didn’t feel the initial magnitude 8.8 earthquake or any of its aftershocks. And thankfully, he said, they haven’t found any damage.

“We checked the pier. We checked the small boat harbor. We’re still in the process of just checking things, just to be double sure,” Craig said. “Even small waves, you know, can do damage. So far, we’re not finding anything.”

Craig said the town’s emergency systems were ready for the alert — they’d just held a tsunami siren test Friday.

“The downside of that was we had to make sure we said ‘Hey, this is not another test. This is real, please evacuate to the tsunami center,'” Craig said.

Other communities in the western Aleutians also saw tsunami waves — including Atka and Nikolski, which both had observed wave heights of over a foot, according to the National Weather Service. Waves of just under a foot were also observed in Unalaska.

Dave Snider, a tsunami warning coordinator with the National Tsunami Warning Center, said there may still be some unusual currents and water levels in coastal communities over the next several days.

“Don’t be surprised if that happens, and be extra cautious in places that you’re familiar with. Every community knows their coastline better than anybody else,” he said.

A tsunami warning had initially been in effect for communities along the western Aleutian Chain, including Atka and Adak, as well as the Pribilofs. An advisory remains in effect for parts of the California coastline as of Wednesday afternoon.

People in those places are advised to stay out of the water and away from beaches and waterways.

A magnitude of 8.8 would make this one of the ten largest earthquakes ever recorded worldwide, and the largest in more than a decade.

KUCB’s Sofia Stuart-Rasi and Theo Greenly contributed reporting.

A tsunami warning was lifted for Alaska communities in the western Aleutians on Tuesday evening, after a magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck off the coast of
Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula at about 3:25 p.m. Alaska time. A tsunami advisory is still in effect for the western Aleutians, including Adak, Atka and Amchitka.

A tsunami warning had initially been in effect for communities along the western Aleutian Chain, including Unalaska, Atka, Adak and the Pribilofs.

An update at 5:27 p.m. Alaska time canceled the tsunami watch for the Alaska Peninsula east of Chignik Bay as well as southern and Southeast Alaska, after an alert had been issued earlier that day for much of the state’s coast.

Much of the U.S. West Coast also remains under a tsunami advisory, with parts of California and Hawaii still under a warning.

A tsunami warning means people should evacuate inland or to higher ground. Under an advisory, people are advised to stay out of the water and away from beaches and waterways.

The Tsunami Warning Center said that waves of a foot or under had been observed in communities across the Aleutians, including Unalaska, St. Paul and Nikolski. Adak and Atka saw wave heights of over one foot, according to the center, with waves in Atka measuring 1.4-feet.

“A tsunami did occur,” said Dave Snider, a tsunami warning coordinator with the center. “A tsunami is not just one wave, it’s a series of powerful waves. And so it’s entirely possible that the first wave is not the largest and may not be the last.”

Snider said there may still be some unusual currents and water levels in coastal communities over the next several days.

“Don’t be surprised if that happens, and be extra cautious in places that you’re familiar with. Every community knows their coastline better than anybody else,” he said.

In Adak, City Manager Breck Craig and most of the community gathered to wait for the wave at the Bering Hill Chapel on Tuesday evening. The town’s village public safety officer, Mike Lejarzar, peered out to Kuluk Bay with his binoculars, looking for any signs of a tsunami.

“Are you seeing anything, Mike?” Craig asked. “You don’t see anything?”

A wave was forecasted to arrive at 5:40 p.m., but Craig saw no sign of one.

Craig said that by then, most of the town had evacuated to the chapel, which acts as the city’s tsunami shelter.

“We sounded the tsunami siren and collected everybody up and got everybody up here,” Craig said. “We’re all just kind of hanging out, waiting for what they’re thinking is a one foot or three foot wave maybe to come in.”

Craig said everyone had gone home by about 7 p.m., but the city would stay vigilant and watch any updates over the next 15 hours. According to the National Weather Service, tsunamis are a series of waves, and a large tsunami can continue for hours or days in some locations.

In Atka, one of the westernmost communities in the Aleutian Chain, Mayor Luke Snigaroff said that no wave had materialized as of 6:12 p.m., but roughly two dozen residents in the Unangax̂ village had evacuated to high ground.

“We’re still under warning,” Snigaroff said in a telephone interview. “Everybody’s up at the water treatment plant or the quarantine shelter.”

A magnitude of 8.8 would make this one of the ten largest earthquakes ever recorded worldwide, and the largest in more than a decade.

KUCB’s Maggie Nelson and Theo Greenly contributed reporting.

After an 8-month investigation, the law enforcement officers arrested multiple Juneau residents this week for their roles in an alleged organized drug distribution ring. 

According to a press release, the investigation began last fall and involved multiple law enforcement agencies in Alaska and California, where the drugs allegedly originated before arriving in Juneau.

In total, seven people — both Juneau and California residents — were arrested and indicted for charges related to the distribution of about 7 kilograms worth of methamphetamine.