Home fires claim three in 2009, changes at MEA among noteworthy stories

WASILLA — Tragedy struck three times this year when Valley residents died in separate house fires.

Darlene Miller, 54, was pulled from a Jan. 5 house fire on Melanie Avenue. She was flown to Anchorage and then to Seattle but succumbed to her injuries.

Two days later a house on Sylvan Avenue burned while two boys were home alone. The oldest made it out but the youngest, Bryce Anthony Woods, 9, did not.

Those two deaths took a toll on the families and the firefighters who responded, officials said at the time. To have someone die in a house fire is extremely uncommon in the Valley.

Then, on Dec. 20, tragedy struck a third time when Bruce E. Braden, 54, a well-known dog musher and race organizer, died when his house burned near Mile 12 of Knik-Goose Bay Road.

New prison

POINT MACKENZIE — At long last and after clearing numerous hurdles the Mat-Su Borough is finally building the Goose Creek Correctional Center.

The prison, which the borough intends to build and sell to the state over time, is a project that took seven years and three governors to get off the ground.

In late January, in one of its firsts meetings of the year, the borough assembly cut into a cake with architectural mock-ups of the prison printed in its frosting. The body was celebrating awarding bond money to the prison contractor.

Construction began over the summer. Judging by the borough's Web page, where weekly updates complete with pictures are posted, work is continuing apace.

Ill-advised traffic ticket

HOUSTON — Mayor Roger Purcell is still living down the jokes and the heat generated after he pulled over a motorist in January.

Robert Johnson was cited for speeding when the mayor pulled him over on the Parks Highway. Johnson said he was dumbfounded that the flashing lights he saw in his rearview weren't attached to a patrol car but rather to the mayor's BMW.

Johnson made a stink about the ticket, which was eventually dismissed when neither Purcell nor Houston police officer Charlie Seidl, whose signature was also on the ticket, showed up in court. Johnson called Purcell chicken and questioned the legality of those flashing lights on the BMW.

Purcell said that, far from being chicken, he wasn't notified of the hearing. He said the lights on his car are legal and that Johnson deserved his ticket because he clearly broke the law. Johnson claims he was innocent.

Standoffs end in death

WASILLA — Twice in 2009 officers shot and killed armed suspects during tense standoffs.

The first came Feb. 3 when Debra Torrey, 38, was shot to death after confronting her therapist with a pistol at a doctor's office on the Palmer-Wasilla Highway. Alaska State Troopers say Torrey pointed the gun at the two officers who shot her.

Then, on Nov. 14, in the early morning hours, Nora J. York, 58, was shot when troopers responded to a call at her home on Atka Drive near Mile 8 of Wasilla-Fishhook Road. The initial call came in as a suicide attempt, though York may also have been threatening the man she lived with. She exited her home with a pistol and a shotgun, pointed them at troopers, and was shot.

“Officer-involved” shootings, as law enforcement describes such incidences, are relatively rare in the Valley. In 2008, there was only one. In 2006 and 2007 there were none.

Venerated leader dies

WASILLA — After years of service to his community, Curtis D. Menard died in March from the cancer he'd battled since 2003.

He was 64.

At the time of his death, Menard was serving as borough mayor — a position former state attorney general Talis Colberg has since filled.

Known to many as a much beloved local dentist, Menard also served, in his time, as a school board member, a state representative and a state senator.

His name and visage were attached to the sports complex in Wasilla, a facility he was instrumental in getting built.

New fire chief

PALMER — The city got a new fire chief for the first time in 40 years with the hiring in April of John McNutt, brought up to the department from Whitehouse, Ohio.

McNutt replaced Dan Contini, who retired in 2008 from the fire department he helped build. McNutt was selected at the end of a long, exhaustive process in which 15 people applied for the job.

Police chief fired

WASILLA — In April, Angella Long ended her tenure as chief of the Wasilla Police Department when Mayor Verne Rupright showed her the door.

Long was the first employee the department hired in 1993 and worked with the first chief of police to build a department from scratch.

The department is still seeking a permanent chief but has hired an interim chief to shepherd the department through the transition and to lead the search for a new top city lawman. Or woman.

MEA full of change

PALMER — It's been a long, strange year for the Valley's electricity cooperative, most notably when its board of directors fired its general manager in June.

When Matanuska Electric Association board member David Dahms resigned in October of last year, the board appointed Kit Jones to take his seat. And, with that appointment, and Jones' retention in this year's election, the board had a majority solidly opposed to the utility's general manager, Wayne Carmony.

And while all who watched MEA knew the board was gunning for him, the process of removing Carmony proved a protracted one — beginning, by most accounts, in April, but with Carmony remaining in his job until June.

A lawsuit filed on behalf of two senior managers who also got the ax during the shake up — Tuckerman Babcock and Bruce Scott — is pending in Superior Court in Palmer.

Meanwhile, the board has hired an interim general manager — Joe Griffith — and is searching for a permanent one.

Couplet goes nowhere

PALMER — Local government meetings over the spring and summer were dominated by talks of a plan to route traffic in and out of Palmer through a couplet of two one-way roads.

The plan drew outcry from downtown business owners who feared the roads would drive away customers and locals concerned that it would cause traffic to move faster, and thus more dangerously. The state's Department of Transportation announced in June that it was backing off its couplet plans.

Then, in December, an advisory committee formed to look at the project drove the final nail into the couplet's coffin with an overwhelming vote to no longer look at the one-way couplet as an option.

Sent away for murder

PALMER — In June, Frank Adams, 48, was sentenced, essentially, to spend the rest of his life in prison for the murder of his girlfriend, Stacey Johnston.

Adams' trial lasted for weeks between February and March. Prosecutors told a story of a relationship marred by violence. Johnston was found dead in the trunk of Adams' car as he drove to Anchorage in 2007.

What the trial did not include was any mention of a murder for which Adams was convicted at age 16, during an infamous murder-for-hire in which he beat and then slashed the throat of Air Force Col. Robert Cassell in 1978.

Vic comes home

WASILLA — Valley residents thought they weren't going to see him again for years, but in June when allegations of prosecutorial misconduct sprung him from the federal prison, Vic Kohring came home early.

Kohring, who served seven terms representing Wasilla, protested his innocence all along. Prosecutors played a tape at trial showing him getting a handful of cash from Veco executive Bill Allen. Kohring said it was a gift from a friend, not a bribe.

Among the first things Kohring did when he got home? He got a haircut. He'd grown shaggy in prison, letting his hair grow long, he joked, as a form of protest.

Water main causes trouble

PALMER — In June a water main under Alaska Street in the heart of downtown Palmer burst, sending up a four-foot geyser and prompting an unscheduled summer of repair work.

That section of pipe turned out to be just one of many the city had to replace over the summer. The work was extensive, leading to shifting detours and traffic patterns, though by wintertime it had all been put back together.

Palin steps down

WASILLA — Perhaps the 2009 Valley story that flew furthest around the world came in July when Gov. Sarah Palin, in a speech in the backyard of her Lake Lucille home, resigned before her first term was up.

Palin cited unfair attacks from her critics and frivolous ethics complaints hobbling her administration as reasons for stepping down. She said she could be more effective outside the governor's office than inside.

The move grabbed headlines and dominated television newscasts almost immediately. Which was to be expected since Palin has remained a fixture on the national political stage since her unsuccessful run for vice president in the 2008 election.

Festival becomes riot

TALKEETNA — What is normally a staid, family-friendly festival took a strange turn this year.

In July, the Talkeetna Moose Dropping Festival saw a slew of random assaults and one death when a partier from Nikiski jumped off a railroad bridge into the Talkeetna River against the advice of Alaska State Troopers.

The troopers said the town became unglued for a night and they had trouble responding to everything that happened. With organizers wishing to avoid the same situation reoccurring, the fate of the 2010 festival remains unclear.

Teen dies running from cops

PALMER — A teenager who ran from police when they came to break up a disturbance fell into the Matanuska River in late July, prompting months of speculation which only ended when his body was found in late August.

Trenton Tunohun, 17, was a graduate of the Alaska Military Youth Academy and planned to join the military.

Tunohun and his friends, police report, had been drinking with Troy A. Johnson and Jody M. Johnson, who were semi-homeless at the time, living in a tent. The Johnsons started fighting. One of Tunohun's friends pulled a gun. And when police arrived all the teens fled. Tunohun was the only one who didn't come back, prompting a two-day search effort using helicopters, boats, ATVs and search dogs.

Man dead after shooting

BUTTE — The son of a borough assemblyman was shot to death in August during a bizarre home-invasion robbery.

Mark Ewing said his son, Jeremy Ewing, suffered from schizophrenia. It was mild enough that his parents always just thought he was eccentric.

Alaska State Troopers now believe that two people — Jerome Capps and Dana Sanders — organized the robbery and were targeting the homeowner's marijuana grow. Capps accomplished his end of things from prison.

Whatever the case, the homeowner who, according to most accounts, was awoken when Jeremy Ewing entered that night and struggled with him before shooting him, hasn't been charged with any crimes. But Capps and Sanders are facing criminally negligent homicide and robbery charges.

Longtime judge resigns

PALMER — After more than 25 years on the bench, Superior Court Judge Beverly Cutler presided over her last hearing as a sitting judge in September.

Now retired, Cutler said she plans to return now and then to hear cases when the court needs someone to fill in. But she also plans to work with local non-profits and generally enjoy her time off.

Cutler was the first Superior Court judge assigned to the Valley. The courthouse now has five. When she began her career, the court kept some of its files in the bathtub of a converted apartment. Now it sits in a large, modern facility and plans to expand into the old Valley Hospital building.

New school named for artists

WASILLA — September marked the opening of a brand new elementary school in the Valley.

Named after Fred and Sarah Machetanz, the school was known during its construction as South Palmer Elementary, even if it's technically in the greater Wasilla area.

In the run up to the school's opening, the question of how parents will access it prompted quite a bit of hand-wringing at the borough assembly when it became clear that to build the roads that the school would need will cost about half what it cost to build the school.

Those roads haven't been constructed. Borough officials said earlier this year that the roads used as temporary access are working fine.

Blast damages shop

POINT MACKENZIE — The maintenance shop at a natural gas liquefication plant exploded in mid-December. No one was hurt.

Fire investigators say they believe a tanker truck parked in the building was leaking gas. They are still trying to determine what sparked the blast.

The company that owns the plant, Fairbanks Natural Gas, trucks the liquefied gas to Fairbanks and has an otherwise upstanding safety record, according to its president, Dan Britton.