Public Safety

The state of Alaska’s case against a Haines man charged with animal cruelty is stuck in a holding pattern, seven months after officials first removed dozens of animals from his wildlife facility.

In September, the Office of Special Prosecutions filed three felony and two misdemeanor charges against Chilkat Valley resident Steve Kroschel, the longtime owner of the Kroschel Films Wildlife Center.

After a years-long back and forth over conditions at the center, the office alleged that Kroschel had failed to provide adequate care for his animals, in some cases causing prolonged pain, suffering and death.

The state issued a warrant for Kroschel’s arrest in late December. But there’s a catch — Kroschel says he has been in Russia since last summer, around the time when the state seized his animals. And during a recent phone interview, Kroschel said he’s staying put for now as he works to obtain Russian citizenship.

“I’m not going anywhere now for a year,” he told KHNS.

Kroschel has virtually attended a number of hearings in recent months. But there will be no trial as long as he remains overseas, Juneau Superior Court Judge Amy Mead said during last week’s hearing.

“Obviously, I would not hold a trial,” Mead said. “If you were to enter into an agreement that included a felony conviction, you would need to be here in person because that involves fingerprinting.”

Kroschel said he understood.

The hearing, which focused on how Kroschel’s defense would be handled rather than on the case itself, was scheduled in response to Kroschel’s request that he be allowed to represent himself due to his dissatisfaction with his public defender.

“I know enough about this case, right and wrong, and the protocols to do this on my own. My life is on the line here, my family, everything,” Kroschel said. “I know what I’m doing. I wish to proceed representing myself.”

Mead, the judge, walked Kroschel through the potential risks and warned him that most people who defend themselves are not successful. Then she asked if he still wished to proceed.

Kroschel replied: “Yes, your honor.”

Mead granted the request.

John Bressette is Juneau’s new avalanche advisor, tracking weather and avalanche risk in the capital’s urban paths. He joined the city just before record snowfall, followed by rain and flooding, pushed the community to declare a disaster and issue evacuation advisories downtown.

KTOO’s Mike Lake spoke with Bressette about navigating that moment and what first drew him to avalanche forecasting.

Listen:

The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Mike Lane: You’re not new to forecasting avalanches. How did you get your start in this field?

John Bressette: Well, I grew up here in Juneau, and I started going heli-skiing with my friends when I was about 18 years old, and decided I better start learning about avalanches to make sure I knew what I was doing. So I took my first avalanche class here through Bill Glude, who is a longtime avalanche specialist in Juneau and worked on some of this urban stuff a long time ago. Took some classes with him, helped him out with some research projects, and started working for him under Alaska Avalanche Specialists. And in the beginning, he had a contract with AEL&P to do forecasting for them. We also worked out at Kensington Mine and kind of helped develop the program they have going out there now and then I worked for AEL&P directly for a long time under Mike Janes as an avalanche tech assistant forecaster. 

Mike Lane: Where did you work before CBJ?

John Bressette: Well, I was doing backcountry forecasting for the Coastal Alaska Avalanche Center. And still am trying to balance both of those for now. It depends on the time of year; I’m a commercial fisherman in the summer, heli-ski guide in the spring and avalanche forecaster in the winter.

Mike Lane: So this isn’t a full-time position with CBJ. This is more of a seasonal?

John Bressette: Yeah, seasonal for now, and we’ll see how it plays out moving forward.

Mike Lane: Immediately, when you started working at CBJ, you were immediately right in the midst of of a disaster, so what was it like to experience that kind of timing?

John Bressette: Yeah, it was intense right off the get go there. So there wasn’t a whole lot of learning on the job. It was right into it. But I feel like everybody at CBJ was really good to work with, and we kind of seamlessly moved into a pretty good workflow, and were able to kind of make decisions on the fly and keep the public informed of what was going on, and I hope that went well from their perspective.

Mike Lane: What are some misconceptions people have about avalanche danger?

John Bressette: Oh, some of the big myths in the avalanche world are that loud noises can set off an avalanche, which is untrue. I think maybe one of the others is that we can predict how big or how far an avalanche will run. And that’s one of the real tricky points to avalanche forecasting, is not knowing how big or how far an avalanche will run during a given avalanche cycle. So it’s — the science behind it is coming a long ways, but it will always be an unprecise science as far as predicting the size of avalanches.

Mike Lane: Do you have any advice that you could give to those folks who are heading into avalanche terrain in the backcountry?

John Bressette: Yeah, so that’s, I want to make it clear that you know forecasting for the urban danger is much different than forecasting for the backcountry, which I do both. So I’m happy to speak on both, but it’s a completely different thing when you’re talking about people traveling into avalanche terrain, you’re looking more at human-triggered avalanches, whereas in the urban, especially in a place like Behrends, where we can’t do control work, you’re looking at more natural avalanches. So yeah, the advice for people, if they’re heading into avalanche terrain is to take an avalanche class, get some education, find the right mentors and group of people that also practice safe habits and just get yourself educated and find the right people to travel with. 

Mike Lane: And what about equipment? 

John Bressette: Yeah, with equipment. I mean, the bare minimum you want to have is a beacon, probe, shovel, partner — and know how to use those things, too. You know, it doesn’t do you any good if you don’t know how to use the equipment. So getting comfortable with those specific tools are kind of the bare minimum that you need to travel safely in the backcountry.

Mike Lane: Okay. And as far as avalanches go, what do you think we could improve on, CBJ specifically? Are there any lessons to be had that we should know about?

John Bressette: Yeah, I think that having more monitoring tools and using technology that’s come a long way for avalanche and weather monitoring is something we’re pushing really hard to get done. Right now, we’re working with AEL&P and DOT to put together a weather station on Mount Juneau, or, I should say, rebuild. There was one there previously, but we’re kind of revamping it and getting it live again, as well as, thanks to the state and the governor’s office, through this disaster declaration, we were able to buy what’s basically an avalanche radar. So it points at Mount Juneau, and we can now detect when avalanches happen at night or during foul weather. So that’s a really useful tool for us to kind of know when activity starts if we can’t visually see it or hear it. So I think those two things are going to have huge, huge benefits down the road when we enter this kind of avalanche cycle again.

Mike Lane: Are there any hot spots right now that you look at today? You step outside and you look up and you go, Hmm, that’s something we want to keep an eye on, more so than these other areas?

John Bressette: Yeah. I mean, I would say that the Behrends and the White Subdivision pass, the Bartlett pass. Those are our three big ones. Debris came a lot closer to people’s homes and the roads than than we previously thought. So you know, there was debris within 10 feet of a couple homes and on Thane it came down under the power lines and was within 100 feet of Thane road and stuff like that. So, yeah, I would say, when we get a big snow cycle like that, there’s, you know, places that we don’t typically think of the hazard being high that actually came pretty close. So those are the reasons we got people out of their homes. And yeah … I hope that comes through, that people’s safety was of the utmost importance.

Listen to this story:

Landslides have killed at least a dozen people in Southeast in recent years. 

That prompted Aaron Jacobs, a hydrologist at the National Weather Service in Juneau, and his colleague to answer a major question people in the region have been asking: “Are we seeing more landslides across Southeast Alaska?”

A couple of years ago, scientists weren’t sure. Now, Jacobs says the answer is yes.

According to the study, published in the journal Landslides in November, news outlets reported 281 destructive landslides between 1883 and 2025 in Alaska. Jacobs said they decided to use news reports as the data source because if a landslide affected people or infrastructure, it probably made the news.

They found the number of reported landslides started to increase in the 1980s and has skyrocketed in recent decades. 

Fewer than 10 damaging landslides were reported per decade before 1980. From the 1980s to the 2010s, they found a 295% increase in impactful landslides across the state. In the 2010s, 84 damaging landslides were reported. In just the first half of the 2020s, 76 landslides have made the news.

“A big thing that stuck out was the precipitation-driven or triggering events that were increasing within the last 20 years,” Jacobs said. 

The four fatal landslides that hit Southeast in recent years — Sitka in 2015, Haines in 2020, Wrangell in 2023 and Ketchikan in 2024 — were all triggered by heavy rain or rapid snowmelt.

In the paper, the scientists drew a connection between rising average annual air temperatures — between 1.2 and 3.4 degrees Celsius — and a 3% to 27% increase in precipitation across Alaska over the past half-century. 

“It’s all connected,” Jacobs said. 

It’s a result of climate change. As the globe heats up, more intense atmospheric rivers are slamming Southeast because warmer air can hold more moisture. These downpours cause steep slopes to crumble. 

Climate change is also expected to raise the frequency and intensity of storms that dump rain on top of snow. When the rain melts the snow, it rapidly saturates hillsides and can make landslides more likely. Additional research published Wednesday by Jacobs and others found that this phenomenon triggered the 2023 Wrangell landslide.

Earlier this month, Jacobs and his colleagues posted a manuscript of a scientific paper addressing these rain-on-snow events that hasn’t been peer-reviewed yet. They used a high-precision weather forecasting model to assess atmospheric rivers in Southeast within the last handful of decades and project how they could change in the near future.

The researchers found that rain-on-snow events coincided with 8% of landslides assessed between 1981 and 2019, including some that were large and widespread. They predict that rain-on-snow events will happen more often and involve an increase in extreme rainfall and snowmelt between 2031 and 2060 as the atmosphere continues to heat up.

How people use the land also plays a role in where landslides occur and how they affect people. On Prince of Wales Island, scientists have mapped nearly 800 landslides. The island is crisscrossed by hundreds of miles of logging roads. 

“The writing is on the mountain,” said Quinn Aboudara, natural resources manager for the Shaan Seet tribal corporation in Craig. 

He said he’s noticed that landslides are more prevalent in logged patches and where roads cut across steep slopes. When he was growing up in Port St. Nicholas Bay, he said landslides weren’t as frequent and more snow fell in the winter. In recent years, it mostly rains. 

“Now we treat the rainy seasons as landslide season,” he said. 

Shaan Seet is piecing together a road and culvert inventory to identify problematic areas. During a deluge, Aboudara said some old culverts meant to funnel water under roads clog or just aren’t big enough to handle the runoff. He said that causes water pressure to build up in the hillside and can lead to landslides. 

“We’re looking to replace those with actual bridge works instead of culverts,” he said. 

At the Sitka Sound Science Center, Luka Silva is working on other measures to reduce risk. He manages the Ḵutí Geohazards Project, which works with Southeast communities to address gaps in landslide science and public safety. 

“Because no one wants to lose their neighbor or their home or their friends or loved ones in a landslide, and we have steps that we can take to make that less of a possibility,” Silva said. 

The center developed an early warning system for Sitka that Silva said other communities are using as a model. Scientists are studying soil thresholds to someday forecast landslides. Many communities are working on or already have landslide hazard maps. 

But some municipalities have struggled to take action. After residents in Juneau pushed back against updated landslide hazard maps, the Juneau Assembly declined to adopt them and rolled back development restrictions in landslide paths. Nearly identical stories played out in Sitka and Haines. It’s because homeowners don’t want to see their property values tank and insurance premiums rise. 

Silva urges people to keep the bigger picture in sight.

“We know what we know about how our landscape is going to change even further, and how our landslides are going to be more and more impactful and frequent,” he said. “What are we going to do about that? And what are we going to do to make people safer?”

This story has been updated with information about an additional study published Wednesday. 

More than eight years after 19-year-old Kake resident Jade Williams was killed at a party, a man has been sentenced for causing her death. 

On Wednesday, Superior Court Judge Marianna Carpeneti sentenced 33-year-old Isaac Friday to 20 years in prison for manslaughter. Friday has already spent several years in prison since his 2019 arrest. The judge suspended the remaining years of the sentence. 

Instead of serving more time in prison, Friday will be on probation for seven years, and if he violates his probation, he will face the remaining prison time.

Williams was found dead on August 15, 2017 at a party in her family’s house in Kake, according to court documents. Investigators from Juneau didn’t reach the scene until the next afternoon. Williams and Friday, who was 24 years old at the time, had been in a relationship, and the case was tried as a domestic violence case. 

Friday was first indicted in 2019 on four charges: two murder charges, a manslaughter charge, and a criminally negligent homicide charge. As part of a plea deal, Friday pleaded guilty to the manslaughter charge in February 2025. All other charges have since been dropped.

Jeremy Williams, Jade’s father, said at the sentencing hearing that his life hasn’t been the same since his daughter was killed. 

“I had one job — I failed — that was to protect her,” he said. “It eats at me every day.”

Williams said he believes the sentence is just a slap on the wrist, and that his family’s experience throughout the investigation and criminal proceedings has been traumatizing.

“I really don’t know what to make of this,” he said. “It’s been a nightmare”

He said Jade had plans to go to cosmetology school in Washington, and that seeing other kids graduate and go to college makes him feel her loss, even eight years later. 

But Williams said he hopes this sentencing means Jade’s family can begin to move forward. 

“I hope myself, my family, my friends, his family — we could start to heal,” Williams said.

Friday’s defense attorney Eric Hedland said at the hearing he believes it’s possible that his client didn’t kill Williams. He pointed to another man at the party, who Hedland said admitted that he had been in a fight with Jade that night and had injuries consistent with an altercation. Hedland said DNA evidence that came out years after Friday’s indictment pointed to that other man. The state never filed charges against that person in connection with Williams’ death.

“I don’t know what happened. I don’t think anybody does. I don’t think the state does,” he said. “And that troubles me.”

Friday himself took the chance to speak during the sentencing Wednesday, and said he wants to be able to serve his community again. 

“I’m ready to start giving back instead of taking,” he said. “I’m ready to help someone else rather than sitting in a room taking.”

Before delivering the sentence, Carpeneti said she also thinks the facts of the case remain muddled. 

“None of us will ever know with a lot of clarity every event that transpired that evening and all of the harm that was done to different people,” she said.

Carpeneti said she knows the legal system can’t fix the pain Williams’ death has caused.

“There is not a sentence in the world that will restore Mr. Williams, his family, Jade’s friends and the community of Kake,” she said.

But, she said, the court’s responsibility in a plea agreement is to find an outcome that both parties — the state and the defense — will accept. Friday’s sentence, which both parties agreed to, achieves that. 

Alaska’s capital city will soon have a new fire chief. 

The City and Borough of Juneau named Thomas Hatley as Capital City Fire/Rescue’s new fire chief on Friday afternoon. His first day will be Feb. 9. 

He was one of the two finalists for the position to replace longtime fire chief Rich Etheridge, who retired at the end of December after more than 15 years leading the department. 

Hatley served as the deputy chief for the Spokane Valley Fire Department in Washington until April of this year, when he left due to a family medical reason. He has more than three decades of experience in fire service, holding positions like fire chief, assistant chief and fire marshal at multiple agencies in the Northwest. 

During a public candidate presentation in Juneau in December, Hatley said he was drawn to the position because of the complexities of Juneau’s fire and emergency medical services needs. He pointed to its lack of outside support, large service area and seasonal population surges. 

Hatley said he wanted to see the department focus on resolving its staffing issues, especially by retaining the department’s employees. The Juneau Career Firefighters Union is currently at an impasse in its negotiations over a new contract with the city. Union representatives say uncompetitive wages and staffing shortages are driving people away from the department.

The annual salary listed on the city’s website for the position is between $125,944 and $161,761.

Cindy Carte, the city’s human resources manager, is currently serving as acting chief.

An Alaska Superior Court judge has ruled that a state law limiting live shows at breweries, distilleries and wineries in Alaska is an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment and the Alaska Constitution’s protections for free speech.

Judge Adolf Zeman issued his decision Wednesday in a two-year-old lawsuit filed by three alcohol manufacturers against the state of Alaska’s alcohol regulator two years ago.

“The speech restrictions fail the tests of strict and intermediate scrutiny, and such suppression of speech by the state cannot stand,” Zeman wrote at the conclusion of his 25-page order.

Until 2022, alcohol manufacturers were prohibited from having entertainment — including TVs, dancing, games and live music — on site. That year, as part of a sweeping modernization of the state’s alcohol laws, breweries, distilleries and wineries were allowed up to four live events per year if approved by the Alaska Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office, the state regulator.

Bars continued to be allowed an unlimited number of live events without permit; the difference in limits was billed as a political compromise necessary for the reform to pass the Legislature and become law.

Three companies — Zip Kombucha, Sweetgale Meadworks and Cider House, and Grace Ridge Brewing Company — filed suit to overturn the four-event limit, raising free-speech and equal-protection claims.

They were represented in court by a national group, the Pacific Legal Foundation. While the plaintiffs eventually dropped the equal-protection argument, the free-speech debate continued through written arguments.

Zeman ultimately concluded that the state failed to show how restricting live entertainment at breweries and distilleries, but not bars, would protect public health or safety.

“This court recognized that the challenged speech restrictions were once a critical piece of a grand compromise … however, political compromise is not recognized as a substantial government interest for the purposes of restricting speech under the First Amendment. Neither is the codification of preference for one industry actor over another,” he wrote.

While Zeman overturned a law limiting live entertainment, he upheld a law forbidding breweries, distilleries and wineries from having pool tables, dartboards and similar games, “because they are not speech.”

He also gave nodding approval to a law that restricts brewery, distillery and winery operating hours and serving sizes to less than what’s allowed for bars.

“The Legislature has, and can further address public health and safety risks associated with alcohol consumption in breweries and wineries by limiting the amount of product that can be served, the hours during which they can operate, or by reducing the cap for the number of brewery or winery licenses allowed in a given community,” he wrote.

Alaska Cabaret, Hotel, Restaurant & Retailers Association, or CHARR, a trade group representing all kinds of alcohol retailers — including bars and package stores — did not return a request for comment before the reporting deadline for this article.

An appeal to the Alaska Supreme Court is possible by either side. Representatives of the Alaska Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office and the Alaska Department of Law said those agencies were still analyzing the decision.

“AMCO does not have an opinion on the ruling and is discussing the matter with agency legal counsel,” said Jenae Erickson, acting public information officer for the Alaska Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development, the parent agency of AMCO. “At this time, we can’t definitively state how the order will be implemented, or what Alaskans can expect. When AMCO has appropriate guidance, an advisory notice will be released.”

Donna Matias, an attorney with Pacific Legal Foundation who represented the plaintiffs, said she is “really pleased” with the decision and said Alaska limits on live events are “actually very unusual” on a national level.

“It was a political compromise, but the legislature really never had the breweries’ First Amendment rights to use as political bargaining chips,” she said, “and I think the court in this opinion recognizes that very explicitly.”

Lee Ellis, head of the government affairs committee for the Brewers Guild of Alaska, said by phone that the guild had been pushing for a legislative solution to the issue, “but we’re happy to see those entertainment live-music restrictions are finally lifted. I think it’s a win regardless, and we look forward to offering a lot of opportunities for small-time musicians to further present their craft.”

One of those musicians is Juneau singer-songwriter Marian Call, who also works as executive director of MusicAlaska, a group devoted to boosting Alaskan musicians.

Call hosted a Christmas concert in a Juneau distillery before the end of the year, one of four events allowed at that space last year.

She said her group applauds Zeman’s ruling.

“Musicians have a superpower — we can enter an empty room and fill it with people. We create economic activity out of nothing but sound waves. Many businesses benefit from our labor, but none more than restaurants, bars, and the alcohol industry at large,” she said. “Limiting music professionals’ opportunities to work as a part of the SB9 compromise was inappropriate and, as the Superior Court has now ruled, unconstitutional, since musical performance is a form of speech.”

Call said MusicAlaska would love to see Thursday’s ruling bring more music to all kinds of venues — bars, breweries and those that don’t serve alcohol at all.

“Alaskan musicians’ desire and ability to host music events is not a limited resource,” she said, “and the more we get to work, the more Alaskans get to play.”