Law enforcement in Ketchikan on Feb. 6 seized almost 15,000 counterfeit pills containing fentanyl and two pounds of meth. The bust is linked to another seizure of nearly 10,000 pills back in January.

Altogether, the two busts were worth about $1.7 million of the drugs sold on the street.

In January, Ketchikan police arrested Andrew Hanson after they found about a half pound of powders containing meth and fentanyl. They also seized almost $15,000 in cash, a .38 special handgun, and nearly 10,000 counterfeit oxycodone pills containing fentanyl. Hanson was still behind bars on Tuesday when detectives carried out another seizure of 14,938 fentanyl pills and 1.8 pounds of methamphetamine. They say it is all part of the same investigation.

According to Alaska State Troopers, the seized fentanyl is about 38,000 fatal doses, enough to kill every one of the 14,000 people on Revilla Island multiple times over. Trooper Spokesman Austin McDaniel said in an email that, besides Hanson, no additional charges have been filed.

The flow of fentanyl into Ketchikan has become a major pain point in the community. Members of the Alaska National Guard were also in Ketchikan this week. They were deployed to brief the community on the dangers of fentanyl, especially for Ketchikan teens. They held a community meeting at the Ted Ferry Civic Center.

The briefing began with the National Guard showing attendees a short film by Dominic Tierno called “Dead on Arrival.”

“Who here knows someone – a loved one, a relative, or just someone around who’s died from overdose?” Sgt. Elijah Gutierrez, a civil operator with the National Guard’s Counterdrug Support Program, asked after the film. 

Nearly everyone in the crowd put their hands up. Gutierrez then broke the news about the day’s bust.

“20,000 pills for Ketchikan tonight that aren’t here, but others are getting through,” he said. “You’re being targeted because a pill here costs $100 versus $10 in Anchorage. It’s very lucrative to sell pills here. That makes you a target.”

He said the goal tonight is prevention through education. Gutierrez referenced something a Ketchikan high school student said to him to demonstrate the severity of the situation: “He said ‘You can’t even try to experiment with drugs, because you just don’t know what’s in them. And you don’t know if you’re gonna die.’ And I was like, ‘job done.’ If a high school student knows about that and has the information and is aware of it, that’s hope.”

The Ketchikan Wellness Coalition also took the stage to talk about youth prevention. Director Jackie Yates said the coalition uses federal grants to bring drug prevention instruction to local schools, including “Ketchikan Youth for Change,” a program that uses a group of youth ambassadors to promote the anti-drug message among their peers.

“High school students and middle school students that are sharing the message that they choose everyday not to use drugs,” Yates explained. “Isn’t that the most powerful message? Everyone assumes that everyone’s using drugs – we see movies and TV and the perception is that drugs are everywhere. Well, these 17 kids say it’s not.”

The coalition will be holding an event in May where parents can walk through a mock high schooler’s staged bedroom and attempt to spot hidden signs of drug and alcohol misuse. 

One resident in attendance asked if the video was being shown at the local warming shelter to educate the homeless population. 

“I think it’s also poignant to note that the majority of people who are consuming fentanyl are actually not homeless individuals,” Yates said. “Which can be really shocking as well – it is far more prevalent outside of that population just based on price and access.”

Another concern raised was whether the local police and the National Guard are testing seized fentanyl for xylazine. That’s a veterinary sedative that when mixed with fentanyl, increases fatality. Xylazine isn’t an opioid so it makes naloxone, or Narcan – the standard treatment for someone overdosing on an opioid like fentanyl – not work as well. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration reported in 2022 that nearly a quarter of all fentanyl tested positive for xylazine.

Ketchikan Police Chief Jeff Walls said he isn’t aware of any statistics on xylazine, but the fentanyl on the island is getting stronger – enough so that they increased the standard Narcan dosage administered by the island’s emergency responders.

“So we are seeing an increase in the potency of the fentanyl,” Walls told the crowd. “Either way, we’re what we’re looking at is a death sentence and that’s why we want it off the streets.” 

Get in touch with the author at jack@krbd.org.

The post $1.7 million of meth and fentanyl seized in Ketchikan, Alaska National Guard briefs community appeared first on KRBD.

There was an apartment fire on the 100 block of Inman Street in Ketchikan over the weekend. No injuries were reported. One of the city’s main arteries, Stedman Street, was closed while the Ketchikan Fire Department responded to the blaze. 

KFD and the Ketchikan Police Department have launched a joint investigation into the cause of the fire. Witnesses claimed seeing the sole resident of the apartment, Belinda Nelson, leaving the building just 20 minutes before the fire was reported. Nelson is being charged with arson. 

Police Sgt. Mike Paulsen determined the fire stemmed from five different piles of paper, plastic, and clothes – two in the living room, two in the bedroom, and one in the bathroom.  

The fire was first reported by a Ketchikan resident driving by that reported seeing smoke billowing from a bedroom window. Police Lt. Mike Purcell says fire crews were able to contain it to one apartment of the 6 unit structure. 

According to charging documents, in the week leading up to alleged arson, Nelson had been served an eviction notice for nonpayment of rent. The termination of tenancy stated that she had to move out by Monday, Jan. 22.

The post Ketchikan resident charged with arson in apartment fire appeared first on KRBD.

The Ketchikan Police Department is investigating a possible arson fire outside of someone’s home.

The small fire occurred Wednesday at approximately 4:30 p.m. at a home on First Avenue near the Residential Youth Center.

According to the residents, someone used an accelerant on empty plastic planters outside one of their doors. The fire melted plastic pots to ashes and left burn marks on the cement floor and up the side of the building.

Three people were home at the time but no one was physically injured.

The Ketchikan police are asking anyone with information to contact them.

Sergeant Mike Purcell says they encourage people to call the PD about any potential crimes.

“That’s like a broad ‘Yes’,” Purcell said. “If there is any kind of potential crime we always encourage people to call — they can talk to any officer. Even if there isn’t a case established, we’ll obviously take information.”

The Ketchikan Police phone number is (907) 225-6631.

The case number for the possible arson fire is 23-1653.

The post Ketchikan PD investigates possible arson fire appeared first on KRBD.

Ketchikan Police Chief Jeff Walls speaks at a meet-and-greet at the Ted Ferry Civic Center on Thursday. (Eric Stone/KRBD)

Ketchikan’s new police chief says he’s looking at options to address the community’s opioid problem. Jeff Walls was sworn in earlier this month.

Walls told a small crowd at a meet-and-greet at the Ted Ferry Civic Center on Thursday that he plans to focus outreach efforts on discouraging drug abuse.

“The biggest thing is prevention. And that’s what I see us doing involved in the schools. And the last thing I want to do is create another generation with addiction, and that’s where I’m afraid it can go,” Walls said.

Walls said he recently met with a Ketchikan Wellness Coalition task force aimed at reducing drug abuse known as PIERS. He’s planning to hold an event with the group on April 2 that aims to help adults spot the signs of drug abuse in children.

Walls says he’s also interested in helping the court system to stand up a program that would place low-level drug offenders in treatment rather than jail.

“Thinking of what (we can) do to help the community the most, and that’s drug prevention, and rehabilitation (are) the really only tools that you have that are most successful,” Walls said.

There are currently diversion programs for people suffering from drug and alcohol addiction in some larger communities. Walls said he’d like to work with local judges to get a similar program set up in Ketchikan. And he could find help from an incoming Ketchikan Superior Court judge — Dan Doty told KRBD earlier this month that addiction was an issue close to his heart. Doty said he’d worked to expand the therapeutic courts in Bethel.

Walls said he plans to continue community engagement programs started by his predecessor, Joe White, and start some of his own. Some were put on hold during the pandemic.

“We’re going to bring all that back with coffee on your corner, coffee with the chief and stuff like that — all that stuff that Chief White established, we’re bringing it all back and just growing it,” he said.

Walls said in his previous position as a New Orleans police commander, he held regular meetings to hear feedback and answer questions from the public. He said he was considering a similar program in Ketchikan.

And he said he’d like to purchase a police dog to serve, at least partially, as a mascot.

“It’d be more of an Officer Friendly type of thing, and also it would be good for you know, narcotics — it’d be a dual purpose,” Walls said.

Walls said he’s continuing to meet with local stakeholders and plans to sit down with tribal leaders in the near future.

The post New Ketchikan police chief aims to address opioid abuse prevention and rehabilitation appeared first on KRBD.

Police laid out seized drugs and cash at a press conference on Tuesday. Five people are facing felony charges connected to two drug busts in the past week. (Eric Stone/KRBD)

Authorities have charged five people with attempting to smuggle drugs from Washington state into Southeast Alaska. Ketchikan police say two separate recent busts in the past week turned up more than 1,400 counterfeit pills thought to contain fentanyl, plus large amounts of heroin and methamphetamine. It’s the latest in a series of drug busts in the southern panhandle.

While investigators don’t believe the two recent cases are directly connected, the suspects in the alleged drug-smuggling cases used similar techniques, says Ketchikan Police Lt. Andy Berntson.

“Essentially, the people from Washington State were being utilized to transport with their bodies and their luggage, large amounts — I mean, these are large amounts of drugs — to Ketchikan that can be very damaging,” Berntson said at a press briefing on Tuesday.

The synthetic opioid fentanyl is thought to be especially dangerous because even small quantities can lead to fatal overdoses.

He says the recent arrests and drug seizures in Ketchikan are part of an ongoing effort by local police and the Southeast Alaska Cities Against Drugs task force, a collaboration of local police departments and state and federal law enforcement agencies, to clamp down on the movement of drugs into the panhandle.

“You generally have the setup of, there’s some source of supply in Washington State, a person that essentially takes the risk for some incentive to bring them here to a person that then is kind of the next-layer distributor in Ketchikan,” Berntson said.

In the first case, police say 35-year-old Washington state resident Jamie Guiberson was arrested after arriving March 11 at Ketchikan’s airport after police found 400 pills suspected to contain fentanyl, along with heroin and methamphetamine in a search. Police say an investigation found that Guiberson had traveled to deliver the drugs to two Ketchikan residents: 29-year-old William Van Sise and 31-year-old Kendra Bartholomew, who were also arrested. Police also charged Van Sise and Bartholomew with arranging for a separate shipment of meth that was seized at the airport in February.

In the second, police say they found more than 1,000 fentanyl pills plus heroin, meth and powdered fentanyl on the person and in the belongings of 34-year-old Michelle Nelson of Washington state, who arrived from Seattle March 14. Police say the shipment was intended for 37-year-old Ketchikan resident Angelina McDonald. All five suspects are facing felony drug charges. Each was assigned a state-funded attorney in their initial court appearances. The state Public Defender Agency didn’t respond to emails seeking comment on their behalf.

Berntson says the two recent sets of arrests targeted couriers and local distributors.

“You don’t have a courier without a responsible party on either end. So, if we can start with the person in Ketchikan who is distributing it in the streets, which we feel like we have done in these two cases, at least, you know, we can start trying to cut the head off the snake a little bit,” Berntson said.

It’s the latest in a series of busts announced by Ketchikan police as authorities seek to take a bite out of the supply of illicit opioids in the region. Last month, police – working with the regional task force – said they’d arrested a man and seized two dozen pills and $29,000 cash from a Creek Street hotel room. The department announced the seizure of nearly 3,000 similar pills and thousands in cash in December. And state troopers charged a woman in February 2021 with smuggling some 200 fake oxycodone pills and a half-pound of heroin into Ketchikan. Police say for now, there’s not evidence that the cases are connected.

KPD Detective Jack Ford says informants are telling him that the seizures have had a measurable effect on the number of fentanyl-laced fake oxycodone pills on the street. He says the price of the small, blue pills stamped “M30” has risen significantly in Ketchikan.

“The most recent street value has been between $80 and $100 a pill. That’s fairly recent. It used to be that they were about $60, so we’re glad to see that the price has gone up a little bit in the past month,” Ford said.

Ford says recent seizures have also helped slow the flow of opioids into smaller communities in the southern panhandle.

“We’ve seen that as a result of some of our more recent successful investigations that the price of these pills on specifically Prince of Wales Island has dramatically increased and the availability has gotten very difficult to find,” Ford said. “We’ve been able to look at these investigations where we’re seizing large quantities of pills that has a very direct impact on the smaller communities.”

Berntson says police believe drugs also move north from Ketchikan into communities like Jueau and Sitka.

While police say the couriers appear to be coming from the Seattle area, Berntson says authorities haven’t identified the source of the pills themselves.

The post Authorities charge five people in two separate recent Ketchikan drug busts appeared first on KRBD.

Cmdr. Jeff Walls’ official New Orleans Police Department portrait. Ketchikan’s City Council is set to consider offering the job of police chief to Walls. (NOPD)

City officials in Ketchikan are considering a New Orleans police commander as Ketchikan’s next police chief. Ketchikan’s City Council will be asked Thursday to approve the city manager’s recommendation to make an offer.

The job’s been open since Joe White, Ketchikan’s police chief of four years, retired in June.

A hiring committee has forwarded its top choice out of 31 candidates to the city council, including three Ketchikan police officers who had applied for the top job. Acting City Manager Lacey Simpson wrote in a memo that New Orleans police Cmdr. Jeffrey Walls had the “experience, community approach and mentorship philosophy” that would make him an asset in Ketchikan.

Walls is a 24-year veteran of the New Orleans Police Department who’s served as a commander for a decade. He currently oversees the 8th District of New Orleans, including the French Quarter, and says in his job application that he’s deeply involved in community groups in the area. He says he’s promoted an initiative called “Ethical Policing Is Courageous” that encourages officers to step in and prevent wrongdoing by their colleagues.

“I have been instrumental in establishing police behaviors that build positive community relations through constitutional policing,” Walls wrote.

Walls wrote in his job application that he’s “always loved the idea of moving to Alaska.” He says he grew up in a small town in Alabama and misses the feel of a tight-knit community.

Walls’ tenure in New Orleans has not been without controversy. The city of New Orleans paid $200,000 to the family of a Black man he and two other officers shot and killed after he reportedly threatened them with a knife in 2005. The man’s family sued in federal court and the case was settled by the city in 2011, according to the New Orleans Advocate.

But he’s also been decorated in his law enforcement career. He  listed 20 commendations and special recognitions he’s received from the New Orleans Police Department.

Walls would be the first outside hire for Ketchikan police chief in more than a decade. The previous two chiefs, Joe White and Alan Bengaard, were internal candidates. The last outside hire was Ed Talik, who was hired as chief in 2008 after leaving a job in Maryland.

The police chief is typically hired without input from the city council. But because Walls’ salary offer of $132,000 and 19 days of paid vacation exceeds the city’s salary cap, it must be approved by elected leaders.  If approved, he could be hired as soon as February.

In other business, the city is asking the state for $17 million to make up for a 24% drop in city revenue in 2020 it blames on 2020’s aborted cruise season. The council will be asked Thursday to confirm the application for a share of Alaska’s $50 million in federal American Rescue Plan relief for municipalities. Officials say it will be some time before they find out how much Ketchikan will receive.

Ketchikan’s City Council meets at 7 p.m. Thursday in its chambers at City Hall. The full agenda is available online. The meeting is broadcast on local cable channels and live-streamed at the city’s website.

The post City Council to consider offering Ketchikan police chief job to New Orleans police commander appeared first on KRBD.

The Ketchikan Police Department is shown in this 2013 file photo. (KRBD)

A Ketchikan City Council member is suing the city for at least $100,000 after he says he was hit by a Ketchikan police car while crossing a downtown intersection more than two years ago.

It’s a contentious matter that’s ended up in court. But here’s where all sides seem to agree:

It was Valentine’s Day 2019. Sam Bergeron, who’s been on and off the Ketchikan City Council since 2007, was walking home with his wife, Linda Millard, after a celebratory dinner. They passed the Ketchikan Police Department and stepped into a crosswalk at Grant Street.

That’s where they were both hit by Officer Bryan Perez’s police cruiser. They were both injured and an ambulance took them to the hospital, according to a lawsuit the married couple filed against the city in January. Lawyers for the city confirmed the basic facts in their answer to the suit.

Bergeron and his attorney declined to comment. But in court filings, Bergeron’s lawyer says he suffered a concussion, plus what he describes as “significant injury to his body.” Millard was hurt as well. They say they were emotionally traumatized and suffered “significant” — but unspecified — financial damages. The pair say they are still undergoing treatment for the injuries.

Both the police chief and city attorney declined to comment. But a police report confirms the couple were treated for what the report describes as “minor injuries” before they were discharged from the hospital.

In their lawsuit, Bergeron and Millard say that “several days” later, the police officer showed up at their home. In court filings, attorneys for the city say Officer Perez’s intent was to apologize and check up on them.

But the husband and wife see it differently. They describe the visit as “unannounced and uninvited” and say it was meant to intimidate them and head off legal action. They say the visit was “outrageous conduct by a police officer of the Ketchikan Police Department.”

Bergeron and Millard also say this wasn’t the first time pedestrians had been hit in that very same intersection. But they say the city has failed to put up warning signs or improve streetlights in the area. They say that’s evidence of negligence.

The city denies the allegation in court filings, and the police report notes that the intersection is “fairly well lit.”

City officials did not respond to questions asking whether the incident had been investigated by an outside agency or whether the officer faced any administrative sanction over the incident.

Bergeron and Millard are seeking upwards of $100,000 each for assault and battery, negligence, reckless driving and emotional distress, plus attorney’s fees. A trial is set for February.

Bergeron’s term on the council expires in October. He is not seeking reelection.

The post A Ketchikan City Council member is suing the city after he says he was hit by a police car in 2019 appeared first on KRBD.

Ketchikan’s Dudley field is shown on Tuesday. Police recently arrested a man who they say raped a 14-year-old girl behind one of the field’s dugouts in 1993. (Eric Stone/KRBD)

Ketchikan police have made an arrest in a 28-year-old rape case. Police credit a recent push to end Alaska’s sexual assault kit backlog with identifying the suspect.

On a dark evening in January 1993, a 14-year-old girl noticed a man following her.

Afterward, she told investigators that he pulled her behind the dugouts at Ketchikan High School’s baseball field and raped her. She told police the man threatened to kill her if she said anything about the assault.

She called the police anyway. But Ketchikan’s acting deputy police chief, Andy Berntson, says the assailant was a stranger — making the investigation much more difficult.

“Ketchikan Police Department worked it diligently — ran down every tip, every suspect, every subject that they could develop as a suspect or a potential suspect and just weren’t able to get anywhere with that investigation,” Berntson said in a phone interview.

It was a shock to the community — Berntson says attacks like that are rare, especially in a small island town like Ketchikan. But the crime went unsolved for decades.

Now, police say they’ve cracked the case with new DNA evidence. Michael J. Williams, a 52-year-old Saxman man, is accused of raping the unnamed teenager on Dudley Field.

“This is as serious as it gets,” District Attorney Timothy McGillicuddy said during Williams’ first appearance in court Friday.

Williams faces two charges: first-degree sexual assault and second-degree sexual abuse of a minor. He has not yet entered a plea.

So how did police come to believe Williams was behind the 1993 assault?

As part of the initial investigation, medical professionals collected samples from the survivor’s body in a rape kit. Some 11 years later, in 2004, after advances in DNA forensics, KPD’s Berntson said the kit was tested at the Alaska state crime lab.

“And it was essentially reanalyzed to the point where they (could) actually develop a full genetic profile,” Berntson said.

While police say the sample did turn up male DNA, it didn’t match any profiles in the FBI’s database, the Combined DNA Index System. A dead end.

Another 17 years passed.

Then, this year, Berntson says a years-old DNA sample collected by another law enforcement agency was tested as part of a statewide push. The named suspect in that case was Michael Williams.

And this time, there was a hit: That DNA was similar to the sample collected in the 1993 Dudley Field case, according to court filings.

Since 2007, Alaska law has required violent offenders and those arrested in felony cases to submit DNA samples, though the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica reported earlier this year that many law enforcement agencies had failed to collect and test samples. Williams has not been charged with a violent offense or felony since 1994, when he pleaded guilty to a fourth-degree drug charge. Berntson said Williams was not charged in the case that resulted in the second DNA sample being collected.

After getting a search warrant, Berntson said he took a sample from Williams last week, and it matched the 1993 profile. Williams was arrested the next day.

Berntson says it’s the first time in his 20-year career he’s seen an arrest in a case this cold in Ketchikan. He says a recent effort by the Alaska Legislature to test backlogged rape kits around the state made it possible.

“This is the best-case scenario: that you can solve these cases that victims have not been able to see justice,” Berntson said.

And he says he hopes ending the backlog of rape kits and other DNA evidence can help provide justice for sexual assault survivors and other crime victims.

“And that’s, that’s the goal here — when people go through a situation like this, sometimes the person is known to them, sometimes they’re not, and sometimes this is the only way to provide any form of identification in this type or other types of crime,” Berntson said.

Advocates are applauding the arrest. The executive director of Anchorage-based Standing Together Against Rape, Keeley Olson, says it’s validating for anyone who’s come forward to report sexual assault or rape.

“I just think this is fantastic news,” she said in a phone interview. “It’s got to be really powerful for the survivor to know that this person has been identified and is no longer a potential threat to them.”

She says she’d like to see the state shorten the time it takes to test each kit, and she says she supports the state Department of Public Safety’s efforts to create a rape kit tracking system to provide optional updates for survivors.

Williams has not yet entered a plea. During his first appearance, he said there’s little chance of him leaving town pending trial.

“There’s no flight risk — I have too strong of ties to the community. My mother lives here, nieces, nephews,” he said.

Prosecutors asked Magistrate Judge Amanda Schultz for $500,000 bail; she set it at $350,000. Williams is in custody pending a bail review hearing, which is currently scheduled for Wednesday.

Williams did not address the sexual assault allegations at his first court appearance — that’s typical for felony cases. A preliminary hearing in the case is scheduled for Friday.

Resources are available for survivors of sexual assault. To reach the crisis line for Ketchikan-based Women in Safe Homes, call 907-225-9474 or 800-478-9474. On Prince of Wales Island, advocates from Helping Ourselves Prevent Emergencies are available at 907-401-1611. RAINN, a national domestic violence and sexual assault advocacy group, also operates a crisis line at 1-800-656-4673.

The post Ketchikan police say newly-tested DNA sample led to arrest in 1993 Dudley Field rape case appeared first on KRBD.

The Ketchikan Police Department’s downtown headquarters is shown in this 2013 file photo. (KRBD)

A former Ketchikan political candidate has been accused of physically abusing a younger member of her family.

A Ketchikan police detective wrote in a sworn statement that the victim had red marks and a bruise on her neck. The detective wrote that the child told police they were from the hands of 29-year-old Sidney Hartley.

Police have not commented on the case.

Hartley says she intends to prove her innocence in court.

“I don’t know where these marks came from, but I assure you, they were not from me,” Hartley said in a phone interview Thursday.

Hartley was arrested on felony and misdemeanor charges on Wednesday. She’s out on bail and due to return to court next month.

Hartley is a self-styled political advocate and community organizer. She came in third in the 2019 mayor’s race in the Ketchikan Gateway Borough.

The post Former Ketchikan mayoral candidate arrested appeared first on KRBD.

A 34-year-old Ketchikan man lost his life last month after drowning in a creek while fleeing police. Family and friends describe a bright but troubled young man who fell into addiction. KRBD reviewed the bodycam footage of that fateful night to recount how a routine stop by police ended in tragedy.

Brandon Larson (Courtesy Brianna Gunn)

It’s about 12:30 a.m. on December 11. An anonymous call comes in to 911 dispatchers.  The caller says he can see a man is attacking a woman from his apartment.

“This guy keeps dragging this lady around and pushing her,” says the caller.

Officers arrive to find Brandon Larson and his girlfriend huddled together on the banks of Ketchikan Creek. They separate the two.

Larson tells Officer Ray Satterfield the couple was just having an argument and are homeless. (KRBD is not naming the alleged victim.)

“What the person that called it in said [is] that you were trying to drag her into the wood line over there,” Satterfield says in one video.

“No sir,” Larson replies. “I would never put my hands on a girl.”

As they’re talking, Larson slowly edges away and abruptly flees. Larson swings under a railing and drops 10 feet onto the swollen creek’s bank — heavy rains had prompted flood warnings the weekend before. He quickly runs out of sight. Officer Satterfield spots him again a little ways upstream.

“I ordered Larson to stop and stated I would deploy the Taser,” Satterfield wrote in the official report.

“Stop, or I’ll tase your ass! Stop!” Satterfield says in the video.

In the report, he writes that Larson is far beyond Taser range. Larson appears to hesitate for a moment. Then he steps down into the fast-running creek.

“Get out of the water, you idiot!” Satterfield calls out.

The current takes Larson downstream. Ketchikan Police Department Lieutenant of Investigations Andy Berntson said that officers still aren’t sure whether it was an accident or an attempt to evade police.

“[The officer’s] initial take was that it appeared he was essentially trying to ride the creek — like, lay into it. Could that be a slip and fall? I mean, it certainly could,” Berntson said in an interview this month.

About 20 minutes later, an officer finds Larson’s body pinned at a logjam a few hundred feet downstream. They call for medics. It takes a pole and ropes to retrieve Larson’s lifeless body. He’d been in the water for about 40 minutes.

“It was a difficult retrieval process,” Berntson said.

‘I do think they chased him to his death’

Police released the bodycam footage to KRBD a few weeks after his death. Members of Brandon Larson’s family have since watched the tapes.

His sister, Brianna Gunn, says it’s clear her brother wasn’t forced into the creek. She’s puzzled by his actions that night.

“But I do think they chased him to his death. I do think that,” she said in an interview this month. “And, you know, whatever that means, I’m not really sure, but I do think that happened. I don’t necessarily think they intended to, but that’s what happened. And I don’t think it had to happen.”

Larson didn’t have any violent criminal arrests in Alaska. Gunn says her brother wasn’t an aggressive person. His problems came from drug abuse.

“He was not a threat to anybody. He wasn’t out to hurt anyone. He was an addict. He needed help,” she said. “And I realize that he was in legal trouble. I understand that. There’s protocol for that. I get that. But at the same time, like, you have to be able to read those kinds of situations.”

Ketchikan police defend their officers’ actions. Berntson said that at the time of the pursuit, they were investigating a report of a woman being assaulted, and Larson had open warrants.

“We had an initial report, which brought us there, we had information from that report that was concerning to follow up on. And domestic violence investigations are tricky, and they can be difficult to sort themselves through,” Berntson said.

But Berntson said the way the night ended was tragic.

“It’s horrible. I mean, any — any person that dies from a preventable situation is just — it’s sad. It’s, it’s, you know, you feel like, you know, everybody in that situation, you know, it could have been, it could have resulted better for everybody. And it didn’t need to end that way,” Berntson said.

He said the department was reviewing what happened that night to prevent it from happening again.

Who was Brandon Larson?

Bergan Wieler was one of Larson’s best friends.

“He was a really carefree type of guy,” Wieler said in an interview.

They started as high school friends, wrestling on the beach and catching pint-size trout in Carlanna Lake. He remembers Larson loving books and having an intellectual streak.

“He would have an extreme knowledge base, because he’d read like 20 or 30 different books from different [political science] authors and then going off on diatribes about things like that,” Wieler said.

Brandon Larson, left, and friend Bergan Wieler. (Courtesy Brianna Gunn)

But after finishing high school, Larson didn’t continue his education. He started abusing prescription opioids. He moved to Seattle a few years later.

He would bounce back and forth between Ketchikan and the Lower 48. Then last summer, he returned to Ketchikan for good. Dave Timmerman had been his boss years back when he’d hired him as a security guard at the port. He came across Larson again this summer.

“I ran into Brandon on the sidewalk, downtown — actually, in front of the Ketchikan Daily News,” Timmerman said in an interview.

But he said he could tell right away that addiction had taken its toll.

“And I was shocked by what he looked like,” Timmerman said. “He was skeletal.”

Wieler says his childhood friend was trying to get clean.

“Life had been a little difficult for him where he was, and he decided to take a shot coming back up to Ketchikan,” Wieler said.

At first, things looked good. But the pandemic made it difficult to keep in touch in-person.

Larson was charged with minor theft in October, his first criminal case in Alaska. The following month, he was arrested for allegedly dealing drugs, a felony. Wieler bailed him out. But Larson skipped his court appearance. That technically made him a fugitive from justice the night he ran from police.

His story was one of addiction — one that’s unfortunately not uncommon in the community. And his sister wants people to know her brother was never a violent criminal. She hopes his story helps the community view those fighting addiction as human beings.

“Instead of just writing these people off, as you know, just, junkies,” Gunn said. “And I think it would be good to shed a light on that — for, like, the public of Ketchikan to know like this could be your kid, this could be your brother, or this could be your grandkid. Brandon was that and more to everybody.”

His girlfriend told police that night that they had only been arguing, that things never got physical. But Brandon Larson’s unfortunate decision to wade into Ketchikan Creek that cold December night prematurely ended his life — a life that friends and family say showed so much promise.

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