KNBA Newscast for October 6, 2015
Candlelight vigil honors people who died on the streets of Anchorage
By Anne Hillman, Alaska Public Radio Network
Sunday night about 70 community members gathered on the Park Strip in Anchorage to honor the seven people who died while living outside on the streets this summer. The candle light vigil was held on the same spot where people gathered 32 years ago to demand an emergency shelter for people without housing.
“Hold out your candle for all to see it,” said the St. Anthony Samoan Choir. “Take your candle and go light your world.”
Tina Mafuao, with the St. Anthony Choir, said they chose to sing at the ceremony to teach their youth about helping others and to send a message to people in Anchorage.
“One candle each time would make a difference anywhere, in any dark place,” she said in reference to the song. “So I hope the city of Anchorage will rise up to the call of our brothers and our sisters who are less fortunate," said Mafuao.
Community activist Samuel John told the crowd part of the solution is changing how people who are experiencing homelessness view themselves.
“What I feel that every one of us should do is not just give them our change, not just give them our leftovers. What we really should do is sit down and think about how we are going to give them pride in themselves," said John.
Mayor Ethan Berkowitz says that means acknowledging people without homes as people.
“And when you stop and you talk and you get to know them as individuals and you hear their stories – of a veteran who served his country, of a victim who was subject to the most horrific kind of abuse, as someone who’s fleeing, as someone who’s dealing with mental illness. Calling those people just ‘homeless’ does an injustice,” said Berkowitz.
After the ceremony, community member Christina Mensoff approached the mayor and the governor, who also spoke, with her concerns and asked for solutions. She says she’s as she bikes through town she sits and speaks with many people who live in the camps.
She told the officials that part of the solution is “setting up a place where they can be safe, so they don’t have all of these homeless camps everywhere, and giving them the mental health they need in that area.”
Berkowitz says the municipality is working on solutions, like helping open the housing project Safe Harbor at Merrill Field and providing scattered site housing around the city.
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Hearing starts with testimony that would absolve the Fairbanks Four of 1997 murder
By Dan Bross, KUAC – Fairbanks
A hearing re-examining long questioned murder convictions opened in state court in Fairbanks yesterday. A group of Native men who’ve come to be known as the Fairbanks Four, were convicted of the October 1997 beating death of 15-year-old John Hartman on a downtown street, but as Dan Bross reports, new evidence has leveraged another look.
Alaska Natives George Frese, Marvin Roberts and Eugene Vent, and American Indian Kevin Pease, were convicted of killing John Hartman by juries in two separate trails, but their case has long been plagued by allegations of sub-par forensics, coerced confessions, unreliable witnesses, and even racism.
Fairbanks Four supporters rallied outside the courthouse where attorneys, led by the Alaska Innocence Project introduced a key witness. William Holmes, a man serving double life sentences for other killings, says a group of his friends, not the Fairbanks Four, beat John Hartman in a random attack.
Testifying Monday, Holmes describes himself as the driver, who dropped off three friends, who ran out of sight after Hartman, then returned a few minutes in an agitated state.
“… Excited, out of breath… all of that. And I was asking them, ‘What happened? What happened?’ And they just kept saying ‘Little J was trippin’, he stomped him out. Little J was trippin’; he stomped him out.’ So I looked over at Jason Wallace and I said, ‘Man, what happened?’ And he was just kinda looking like — he didn’t say anything. He was just in his own, looking forward. (He) didn’t respond," said Holmes.
Holmes former friend Jason Wallace, who’s also serving life for an unrelated murder, told a public defender agency employee about the incident in 2003, claiming he was just the driver, a recently unveiled rendition of the story that will come up later in the month long hearing.
State prosecutor Adrienne Bachman acknowledges new evidence in the case, adding she’s also plans to bring forward witnesses, including an Alaska Native cab driver who says she saw the Fairbanks Four near where Hartman was found dying in the snow.
“And she describes the unusual haircut of Kevin Pease, the face of Marvin Roberts, and the elusive — or evasive — action of two other boys who she perceives are Native or Asian," said Bachman.
Bachman says the witness who may appear later in the hearing, describes feeling a catch in her spirit, knowing something was amiss.