{"id":10095,"date":"2016-09-04T08:02:19","date_gmt":"2016-09-04T15:02:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/unsolved-homicides-put-people-on-edge-in-anchorage\/"},"modified":"2016-09-04T08:02:19","modified_gmt":"2016-09-04T15:02:19","slug":"unsolved-homicides-put-people-on-edge-in-anchorage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/unsolved-homicides-put-people-on-edge-in-anchorage\/","title":{"rendered":"Unsolved homicides put people on edge in Anchorage"},"content":{"rendered":"

ANCHORAGE<\/strong> \u2014 A rash of unsolved outdoor homicides in Alaska\u2019s largest city is putting residents on edge.<\/p>\n

Altogether, the deaths of nine people who were killed on Anchorage trails, parks and isolated streets since January remain unsolved \u2014 among them three cases involving two victims each.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s terrifying,\u201d said Jennifer Hazen, a longtime resident who lives near Valley of the Moon Park, where two people were found dead early Sunday, one of them on a park bike trail. Hazen walks in the park regularly, and finds some comfort in knowing the unsolved homicides occurred in the middle of the night when she wouldn\u2019t be out there anyway.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just really shocked about all this happening,\u201d said another resident, Yegor Christman as he walked his dog on the bike trail. \u201cI thought I lived in a pretty safe area.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adding to the feeling of vulnerability, Anchorage has had 25 homicides this year. That\u2019s the same number the city had for the entire year in 2015. Even though the number is high, police point out that 1995, with 29 homicides, had the highest numbers in the last two decades.<\/p>\n

With 15 homicides since late June, police issued an unusual public advisory this week urging residents to be \u201cextra aware\u201d of their surroundings, noting that crimes often increase at night and early in the morning.<\/p>\n

\u201cAPD wants to remind our citizens to be cautious when they are out during these hours, especially if they are in isolated areas like our parks, bike trails or unoccupied streets,\u201d the police department wrote. \u201cIf you plan to be out late at night, make sure you travel with several friends and not alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Police Chief Chris Tolley downplayed the significance of the advisory, saying police often remind the public to be safe, sometimes through a text messaging system. Earlier this year, police issued a similar safety alert after a series of car break-ins and thefts, Tolley said. The goal was the same in this week\u2019s advisory, to inform the public.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is no different,\u201d he said. \u201cWe want our public to be proactive. So this is really a plea to them in their personal safety.\u201d<\/p>\n

In two of the unsolved cases, the victims were shot and found alone. Police will not say how the victims died in the rest of the cases, and they won\u2019t say what details have been shared with the families of the victims. Relatives could not immediately be reached for comment Friday.<\/p>\n

Police have released few details on any of the cases, saying investigators haven\u2019t made any clear connections between the victims. Asked if police believe a serial killer could be on the loose, police spokeswoman Jennifer Castro said police always try to determine if unsolved crimes are related.<\/p>\n

The only common denominators found among the victims are that the deaths occurred outdoors, in the early hours and in isolated places such as trails and unoccupied streets.<\/p>\n

John McCleary is a longtime volunteer with the city\u2019s Trail Watch program, which was started in 2006 after a string of assaults, mostly against women, on local trails. Trail Watch volunteers serve two purposes, to be the eyes for the police department, reporting any problems, and to create safer conditions on 300 miles of trails with such efforts as cutting down vegetation.<\/p>\n

But McCleary, the former director of the program for the city, said he\u2019s never seen a situation with so many unsolved killings \u2014 and he\u2019s been connected with city trails since the late 1970s. He says he feels angry and frustrated that people can\u2019t enjoy the trails like they could a decade ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is … so abnormal,\u201d he said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t seem like I\u2019m in the same city.\u201d<\/p>\n

Randall Alcala walks almost daily along the downtown Ship Creek Trail, where two homicide victims were found dead in July. But those deaths, even though unsolved, don\u2019t make him feel unsafe.<\/p>\n

He just saw a black bear on the trail about a week ago, and is more leery of run-ins with one of the cities hundreds of bears.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ANCHORAGE \u2014 A rash of unsolved outdoor homicides in Alaska\u2019s largest city is putting residents on edge. Altogether, the deaths of nine people who were killed on Anchorage trails, parks and isolated streets since January remain unsolved \u2014 among them three cases involving two victims each. \u201cIt\u2019s terrifying,\u201d said Jennifer Hazen, a longtime resident who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":10096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-10095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10095"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=10095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}