Public Safety

Preventive health care researchers say nearly two-thirds of western Alaska households that were given a lockable gun cabinet or safe were still using them to store their firearms and ammunition about a year later.

Researchers recently announced the results of a study that included the donation of gun cabinets to 255 households in Bristol Bay and the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. Participating households were surveyed before getting the cabinet and then a year later. They were also provided with instructions and a brief safety message.

At least 89-percent of the randomly-selected participating households already had unlocked firearms or ammunition before they had the $80 cabinet installed. One year later, researchers say only 35-percent of those households still reported unlocked guns or ammunition.

Previous studies have already highlighted the Alaska Native suicide rate as three times greater than Caucasian Americans. Additionally, suicide-by-firearm is ten times greater for young Alaska Native men than for their Caucasian counterparts

Dr. David Grossman is a pediatrician, senior investigator in preventive care at Group Health Research Institute, and professor of health services at University of Washington. Grossman was also author of a study seven years ago that linked safe firearm storage to reduced risk of unintentional injury and suicide. We talked to him about the recent gun cabinet installation in western Alaska.

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The donation of lockable gun cabinets to households in western Alaska was done in conjunction with the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, Bristol Bay Health Corporation, and the Yukon Kuskokwim Health Corporation.

Results of the study were published Thursday, March 8th in the online version of the American Journal of Public Health.

A lawsuit stemming from a fatal shooting amongst a group of Juneau teenagers almost four years ago appears headed for the Alaska Supreme Court. A deadline was set for late February for the attorneys to attempt a settlement and the voluminous case file is already on its way for review by justices. No date has been set yet for oral arguments.

14-year old Aiden Neary was killed and Chase Schneider, also 14 at the time, was injured when 15-year old Kevin Michaud fired a gun that he took from a locked cabinet. Two other boys at the Michaud family home in the valley were in a different room and did not witness the shooting.

Michaud in July of 2009 was sentenced to two years in a juvenile facility for criminally negligent homicide and assault. He was originally charged with second degree murder in December of 2008.

The parents of Neary and Schneider filed suit against the Michaud family, First Student bus company, and United Services Automobile Association (USAA) which was the Michaud’s homeowners insurance carrier.

A trial in the case was scheduled for last April. Then a closed-door settlement conference was held last May before former Juneau Superior Court Judge Patricia Collins. Terms were not disclosed. Sitka Superior Court Judge David George issued a final judgment in December and presided over a subsequent hearing on January 6th for possibly apportioning the settlement from USAA. He closed the hearing and asked a reporter who was present to leave because essentially Schneider was still a juvenile. But that was after Judge George openly mentioned that the settlement could be “at least 300-thousand dollars, perhaps much higher.”

Electronic court records indicate that $366,435.88 in settlement funds were deposited with the court system in December and then disbursed in February to a trust account held by the law firm representing the Schneiders.

According to court documents, the dispute under appeal is only between the insurance company and the victim’s families. It centers on interpretations of each ‘occurrence’ specified in the Michaud’s insurance policy and the number of claims that would be covered. Essentially, would an occurrence include the single firing of a weapon? Or were there two separate occurrences of a single bullet striking two different boys? Attorneys for the Schneiders and Nearys claim it’s the latter and they dispute a ruling that was issued by Judge George last June that preferred the former interpretation.

All of the attorneys involved in the case – representing plantiffs, intervenors, and defendants – either declined to answer questions about the case or did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Among the earlier arguments made by plantiff’s attorneys was whether First Student had a contractual duty to make sure that Juneau-Douglas High School students Neary and Schneider got off at their own bus stops, instead of Michaud’s. But First Student did not remain as a defendant in the case.

A Juneau man who accidentally shot his brother last December has been sentenced to one year on probation.

During a short hearing Thursday morning, 32-year old Seth Bingham changed his plea to fourth degree misconduct involving weapons, a misdemeanor, for allegedly firing recklessly. A charge of second degree assault, a felony, was dropped as part of an agreement with prosecutors.

Seth’s 27-year old brother Joe was driving away from the Hank Harmon Rifle Range when Seth, in the truck’s passenger seat, decided to unload and take apart a fairly new Springfield XD pistol. The gun discharged with the slug striking Joe in the lower right leg. It was later amputated.

Seth Bingham told District Court Judge Thomas Nave that he was at his mercy. Nave said he knew that Seth didn’t shoot Joe on purpose, but it was negligent.

Nave, who said that he wasn’t prepared for a change of plea and sentencing (Thursday’s hearing was originally scheduled as a simple status hearing), briefly reflected on his personal experiences of apparent close calls at the rifle range or out hunting.

As part of the agreement, Seth Bingham was sentenced to 180 days in jail with all 180 days suspended. He will not have to serve any time in jail unless he violates any other laws before his probation ends out in a year. He can possess firearms only after he’s off probation and after he completes a week-long gun safety course. An exception includes work purposes. He said in court that he keeps a firearm in his aircraft.

Nave suggested that it would be mutually beneficial for Bingham to talk about his experiences with middle schoolers currently involved with gun safety and hunter education courses. Bingham said in court that it’s still a struggle to talk about the incident.

Juneau School District offices were evacuated early Wednesday afternoon after an employee opened an envelope containing a suspicious white powder.

Juneau Fire Marshal Dan Jager says the envelope was in the day’s mail that had been delivered to the facility at the corner of 12th and Glacier.

The Capital City Fire and Rescue hazardous-materials team was in the building this afternoon.

“We have the haz-mat team that is inside collecting it for evidence,” Jager says. “We’re going to send that to the state crime lab to verify if the power is anything or not.”

Jager says it will take at least a day or two to get the results from the crime lab in Anchorage. “So our plan from here is to take it, package it, take it to the airport and have it Gold Streaked up, so they get it as soon as possible,” he says.

School district spokeswoman Kristin Bartlett says many employees went home around noon and the rest were evacuated about 2:15 p.m. She says district employees will return to work Thursday morning, but the room where the envelope was opened will stay quarantined until the white powder is identified.

Fire marshal Jager says the Juneau haz-mat team also has been called to Thorne Bay, where a white powder was received in the mail.

Lieutenant Lance Leone is a U.S. Coast Guard aviator, and the sole survivor of a 2010 helicopter crash that killed three people from Air Station Sitka. He was facing charges of negligent homicide and destruction of government property.

According to Leone’s attorney, John Smith, Rear Adm. Thomas Ostebo decided not to send the charges on to court martial.

Smith says while it’s the end of the charges, it’s the beginning of a new chapter for Leone.

“Probably one of the most difficult things he’s going to have to do is to be able to do that thing that he loves to do again,” Smith said. “It’s been quite a while since he’s flown or piloted an aircraft, and I’m hoping that he is going to be able to go to retraining soon, pass that retraining, and look forward to a new assignment in the Coast Guard, flying and rescuing people in accordance with the Coast Guard mission.”

Smith said Ostebo’s decision, and the outcome of the charges against his client, serve as encouragement for the members of all military branches that the military’s system of justice works.

Smith says Leone is ecstatic about dismissal of the charges. He talked more about the case in this interview with KTOO on Tuesday afternoon.

The state Division of Elections has turned down a challenge of President Barack Obama’s qualifications to be on the election ballot in Alaska. The challenge was filed by a Juneau resident who says the Democratic candidate is not qualified to run for re-election because he’s of mixed race.

It’s not a lawsuit filed in any court. Actually, it’s what’s called a nomination petition objection that was filed directly with the Division of Elections.

Division director Gail Fenumiai referred the objection to election attorneys within the Department of Law for further review.

“This is first time that we’ve received something like this,” says Fenumiai.

Gordon Warren Epperly is a retired bus driver in Juneau. He challenges Barack Obama’s qualifications to be on the ballot during Alaska’s presidential primary and general election. He says that Orly Taitz and others who’ve challenged Obama’s qualifications of being a ‘natural born citizen’ because of an alleged birth outside of the country went at it all wrong. He says there is no real requirement for a candidate to produce a birth certificate.

Epperly declined to talk on tape for this story. But in his filing he references the infamous Dred Scott decision which he says has never been overturned by the Supreme Court. He says Negros or Mulattos (he pronounces it mull-EYE-ttos) were not eligible to be citizens until the Fourteen Amendment was ratified in 1868. Even then, what Epperly calls ‘purported’ ratification of the amendment only allowed for civil rights, not political rights that allowed them and their descendants to hold federal office.

“That was the distinction that white supremacists in the South after the Civil War used in order to create the system of segregation that took root by the turn of the century,” says David Noon, associate professor of history at the University of Alaska-Southeast. He says Epperly’s assertion hinges on a very dubious reading of citizenship law.

“They argued that it was perfectly constitutional for states to take extraordinary measures to deny blacks the right to vote and serve office,” says Noon.

Noon’s specialty is race relations, identity, and politics in American History. He says calling into question the legitimacy of the Fourteenth Amendment, as ratified by post-Civil War readmitted states, is also a familiar idea of white supremacists.

“Those state governments didn’t have any legitimacy because they did things like abolish slavery or they created civil rights law that explicitly gave African-Americans and freed people all the rights that white citizens enjoyed in those states,” says Noon as he recounted their arguments.

Epperly confirms that under the same logic, women should not have been allowed to run for federal office since the Nineteenth Amendment was passed in 1920. In fact, he also challenged Lisa Murkowski’s run for U.S. Senate in 2010.

Epperly says he’s got some calls and has been called a racist. He also admits a few mistakes in the filing. One was including the term ‘mulatto’ to describe Obama’s mixed-race heritage. He says he didn’t know it was a derogatory term. He also says he wrote an apology for any disruption caused at the Division of Elections. Another mistake was noting his residence as a very popular horse farm in the Juneau area. But Epperly says he’s not the owner or operator. He’s simply an in-law that lives in a nearby building. The farm’s actual owners have disavowed any association with Epperly’s filing.

The filing has virtually been ignored by the mainstream media. Although, some left-leaning blogs and news sites, and other satirical websites that mock the news have already highlighted it.

Elections director Gail Fenumiai says they really don’t have any jurisdiction or governance over the way the candidates are selected at the national level. There is no presidential primary election in Alaska. And, the state cannot intervene in each party’s selection process for national executive office following party conventions.

“The past history of the Division (of Elections) is to accept the form that comes from the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee as submitted.”

As long as that Certification of Nomination arrives this summer, then the currently-presumed candidates of Barack Obama and Joe Biden will appear on this November’s ballot in Alaska.