Trial postponed for man accused of trying to kill former girlfriend

March 18, 2005

KATE GOLDEN/Frontiersman reporter

PALMER - A trial scheduled this month for a Point Hope man accused of attempting to murder his Palmer ex-girlfriend with a knife and a baseball bat has been postponed to April 18.

At 7:21 p.m., Jan. 17, 911 dispatchers called back a number from a call that had been disconnected. A woman answered and dropped the phone. In the background, dispatchers could hear a woman pleading with a man that she would marry him if that's what he wanted.

The woman who made that 911 call, Grace Oomittuk, said she had just returned to her house and parked in a garage below an apartment where her former boyfriend, Tariek Oviuk, 23, was staying. Her 15-year-old brother and her children were in a nearby house. Closing the garage door, she turned to see Oviuk behind her.

Charging documents state that Oviuk punched Oomittuk in the face, kicked her in the head once she fell to the ground, hit her with a baseball bat and cut her with a knife.

Oomittuk, dealing for her life, agreed to clean up the mess and marry him, she said.

As Alaska State Trooper Jason Fieser arrived, Oomittuk ran out of a shed on the property, screaming and covered in blood, he reported.

Oviuk emerged and ran to a nearby field, where he held a knife to his own throat, Fieser wrote. He said he wanted troopers to shoot him. He said, Fieser reported, that the devil had entered his body.

Fieser persuaded Oviuk to put down the knife. He handcuffed the suspect and arrested him for attempted murder.

Oomittuk and Oviuk both grew up in Point Hope. They dated for seven years and had two children together. More than a year before the incident, they broke up, because, she said, he abused her. She moved to Palmer in July 2004.

By the end of the year, he said he was willing to be friends, and she invited him to visit the children over Christmas, she said. The morning of the incident, he had tried to talk her into moving to Fairbanks with him. But she wasn't interested; she was involved with a man who didn't hit her, she told Oviuk.

Oomittuk was treated at Valley Hospital for multiple knife wounds on her arms, legs, back and head.

Oviuk is being held at Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility in lieu of $250,000 and a court-approved third-party custodian.

Contact Kate Golden at kate.golden@frontiersman.com.