{"id":22153,"date":"2016-03-14T08:02:47","date_gmt":"2016-03-14T15:02:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/26-year-old-man-arrested-in-iditarod-crashes\/"},"modified":"2016-03-14T08:02:47","modified_gmt":"2016-03-14T15:02:47","slug":"26-year-old-man-arrested-in-iditarod-crashes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/26-year-old-man-arrested-in-iditarod-crashes\/","title":{"rendered":"26-year-old man arrested in Iditarod crashes"},"content":{"rendered":"

ANCHORAGE \u2014<\/strong> A man suspected of intentionally driving a snowmobile into teams of two mushers near the front of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race was arrested Saturday in a Yukon River village.<\/p>\n

Arnold Demoski, 26, of Nulato was arrested on suspicion of assault, reckless endangerment, reckless driving and six counts of criminal mischief.<\/p>\n

A message left for Demoski at his home was not immediately returned. He told the Alaska Dispatch News that he had not intentionally driven into the dog teams of Aliy Zirkle and Jeff King, but he had blacked out while returning from drinking in another village.<\/p>\n

The crashes killed one of King\u2019s dogs and injured at least two others. One of Zirkle\u2019s dogs also was injured.<\/p>\n

Iditarod officials at first reported King had been injured. But the four-time champion said later the snowmobile had missed both him and his sled.<\/p>\n

Zirkle, 46, who finished second three times from 2012 to 2014, was mushing from Kokukuk to Nulato, a run of less than 20 miles on the Yukon River, when she was hit, race marshal Mark Nordman said Saturday.<\/p>\n

The snowmobile hit the side of Zirkle\u2019s sled about 5 miles outside of Koyukuk, turned around multiple times and came back at her before driving off, Alaska State Troopers spokeswoman Megan Peters said by email.<\/p>\n

The snowmobile reappeared 12 miles outside of Nulato. The driver revved up and was pointing at Zirkle before leaving, Peters said.<\/p>\n

One dog on her team was bruised. Officials described the injury as non-life-threatening.<\/p>\n

Zirkle reached Nulato and told a race official the incident had left her shaken.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m really bad. Someone tried to kill me with a snowmachine,\u201d she said on a video posted to the Iditarod Insider webpage. Snowmachine is what Alaskans call snowmobiles.<\/p>\n

King, a four-time Iditarod champion, was behind Zirkle and fared worse. When King reached the vicinity 12 miles outside of Nulato, his team was struck from behind by the snowmobile.<\/p>\n

Nash, a 3-year-old male, was killed. Crosby, another 3-year-old male, and Banjo, a 2-year-old male, received injuries and are expected to survive. King told the Iditarod Insider the snowmobile narrowly missed him and his sled, but hit his dogs at high speed.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of my dogs was killed pretty much on the spot, and a couple others I gave first aid to the best I could and loaded them into my sled,\u201d he told the Iditarod camera crew. \u201cI kind of felt like a triage ambulance.\u201d<\/p>\n

It did not appear to be an accident, he said. \u201cIt seemed like an act of bravado,\u201d King said.<\/p>\n

Rural Alaska communities have many wonderful people, he said, but they also have serious social problems.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is beyond comprehension to me that this was not related to substance abuse,\u201d King said, adding that \u201cno one in their right mind would do what this person did.\u201d<\/p>\n

King remained in Nulato early Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n

The race leader early Saturday afternoon was Brent Sass, who left the village of Kaltag at 8:20 a.m.<\/p>\n

Zirkle rested four hours in Nulato and dropped one dog before heading back onto the Yukon River with 14 dogs in harness. She reached Kaltag at 10: 44 a.m., and after a nine-minute rest, left again in second place.<\/p>\n

Current champion Dallas Seavey left Kaltag at 11: 24 a.m. in third place. His father, former champion Mitch Seavey, was in fourth place.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

This story has been corrected to show the positions, records of Mitch Seavey and Dallas Seavey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ANCHORAGE \u2014 A man suspected of intentionally driving a snowmobile into teams of two mushers near the front of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race was arrested Saturday in a Yukon River village. Arnold Demoski, 26, of Nulato was arrested on suspicion of assault, reckless endangerment, reckless driving and six counts of criminal mischief. A […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"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-22153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22153","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=22153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22153\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22153"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=22153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}