In most visitors, Alaska inspires wonder at its beauty, awe at its wildlife, and admiration for the hardiness of those who make their lives in its vast backcountry, enduring some of the harshest conditions on earth.
Alaska
Prosecutors clear troopers in fatal New Year’s Day shooting of Fairbanks man
FAIRBANKS, Alaska (KTUU/KTVF) — State troopers who fatally shot and killed a 24-year-old Fairbanks man on New Year’s Day will face no criminal charges, Alaska prosecutors announced, after an independent review determined they were legally justified in their use of deadly force.
Content Warning: This article contains video and information that some readers might find disturbing.
Newly-released redacted Alaska Department of Public Safety incident records show troopers were called at about 11:28 a.m. Jan. 1 to a home on Gradelle Avenue after a report of a domestic disturbance involving Rexford. Rexford had been released that morning from Fairbanks Memorial Hospital’s behavioral health unit, where he had been admitted since Christmas Day.
According to the incident report, Rexford was sitting on a couch as troopers and family members talked with him about returning to the hospital for an involuntary mental health commitment.
The report says Rexford suddenly ran into the kitchen, grabbed large kitchen knives and began making repeated stabbing motions at a trooper, ultimately forcing him to the ground.
The report also says the trooper sustained a small knife wound to his hand during the struggle, which was confirmed by body-worn camera footage.
Two troopers fired their service weapons during the struggle, the report says. Rexford was struck and pronounced dead at the scene. Rexford’s brother Adam — identified by the family at a January vigil — was also struck by gunfire during the shooting, the incident report says. He was transferred to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, where he was treated for a gunshot wound to the head, according to the incident report.
Alaska State Troopers have identified the troopers who fired as Trooper John Faul and Trooper Wyatt Miller. According to AST, both troopers had about five and a half months of service at the time of the shooting. The incident report says Faul also had more than three years of prior law enforcement experience as a patrol deputy with the Broward County Sheriff’s Office in Florida.
The Alaska Bureau of Investigation investigated the shooting, and the findings were independently reviewed by the Office of Special Prosecutions, which has declined to file criminal charges against the troopers.
Alaska’s News Source has reviewed body-worn camera footage and 911 audio released as part of the investigation.
Incident report details
The report says the first 911 call came from Rexford’s brother, who told dispatch his brother was having medical issues and was breaking items in the home and asked that two troopers respond.
The report says a second call came from Rexford’s father, who told dispatch his son was destroying property and had just been released from the hospital’s fourth floor. The father told dispatch no one had been hurt but that Rexford might need to be restrained, according to the report.
The report says troopers were talking with Rexford about a Title 47 — an involuntary mental health commitment — to return him to the hospital. During that conversation, Rexford said multiple times that he wanted to die, according to the report.
Investigators wrote that from the time Rexford stood up and rushed to the kitchen until the final shots were fired was about eight seconds, based on their review of body-worn camera video.
Vigil held for Rexford
The decision comes nearly three months after family and friends gathered Jan. 26 at Golden Heart Plaza in downtown Fairbanks for a candlelight vigil to remember Rexford.
Rexford’s sister, Linda Rexford, read a statement from their parents.
“He liked to go biking, walking and fishing with his family. We were very proud of him buying his first brand new car this past summer by himself,” she said. “He was a kind, thoughtful, caring person who wanted to become a registered nurse. He was excited about being able to do the things he wanted to do and looked forward to working in the medical field in the future.”
Linda Rexford said her brother was born Nov. 7, 2001, in Fairbanks. She said he attended University Park Elementary School, Ryan Middle School and West Valley High School, and became a certified nursing assistant through the University of Alaska Community and Technical College.
Rexford’s uncle, Robert Kious, said at the vigil he wished troopers had used tasers.
What’s next
DPS has said an administrative process can follow officer-involved shootings to review tactics, training and whether any policy violations occurred. AST has confirmed the next steps will be an administrative review to look at tactics, training and whether policies were followed.
The Alaska Department of Law said it was in the process of being released the Office of Special Prosecutions’ official review on Friday.
The Rexford family’s supporters are now calling for a rally at 2 p.m. on Saturday, April 11 at Geist and University in Fairbanks in support of William and Adam Rexford.
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Copyright 2026 KTUU. All rights reserved.
Alaska
An Alaska vacation can remind Israelis the world doesn’t revolve around them | The Jerusalem Post
For Israelis, it can also inspire humility. Not because the Jewish state is smaller than Denali National Park, but because in Alaska, one is reminded that the world neither revolves around Israel nor is obsessed with it.
That realization came on a trip The Wife and I took to America’s Last Frontier last month.
“Where is your final destination today?” the woman checking us in for our flight home at the Anchorage airport asked chirpily.
“Tel Aviv,” I replied. “Where’s that?”
When I said it was in Israel, she smiled and said, “Oh.”
Lest one think this was just a fluke: on the plane a few hours later, another Alaskan asked where we were going. When we answered “Tel Aviv,” she said she had never heard of it.
Granted, two people do not a Pew Poll make, but they do offer a small corrective to the perception – fed by the media most of us follow – that the world is preoccupied with Israel, thinking about us obsessively, talking about us constantly, and cursing us unremittingly.
The last part, at least in Alaska, is also not true. During our two weeks there, we saw no “Free Palestine” graffiti, nor were we subjected to dirty looks or “child killer” comments when we said we were from Israel.
All of America, it turns out, is not Mamdani’s Manhattan, nor does social media present a proportionate picture of that country’s reality.
One of the problems with social media is that every incident of antisemitism is posted online. The incidents are real and rising at an alarming rate, but seeing them all in one place creates a disproportionate sense of how likely you are to encounter them while traveling.
Watch enough clips of a Jewish kid harassed on a New York subway or an Israeli couple berated at a hotel in California, and you begin to wonder whether the same thing awaits you when you ride an American subway or check into a hotel.
It doesn’t. Yet the cumulative effect is that you begin to wonder how open to be about your Israeliness. You don’t decide to hide it, but simply having to ask the question adds a mini-layer of apprehension before every trip.
When Israel comes along for the ride
You also learn to read the Uber.
“Honey,” I urged The Wife before we got into an Uber in Chicago during a brief layover, “you don’t have to say you’re from Israel.”
“Nonsense,” she said. “I’m not going to hide who I am.”
“Wonderful sentiment,” I replied. “The driver’s name is Rabah. Humor me.”
We didn’t volunteer our place of origin, nor did he ask.
But on the entire trip, that was the only time we consciously withheld that nugget of biographical information. Everywhere else, we proudly said we were from Israel – and it was fine. More than fine: it was often a conversation starter.
On a whale-watching excursion, we sat across from a young couple from China who work at Google. They were intrigued that we lived in Israel, and even more fascinated that we passed on the chicken sandwiches being served.
Instead of looking for sea creatures, The Wife spent a good part of the trip explaining why some of the fish in the sea we can eat and others we can’t.
“Honey,” I whispered at one point, a bit annoyed. “We didn’t pay all this money for you to give an introductory lecture on kashrut. Look for the damn puffins.”
Since October 7, another layer has been added to the anxiety of travel: whether your flight will be canceled at the drop of a ballistic missile.
One doesn’t just hop over to Alaska on a whim; it takes planning and a special occasion to justify the expense. For us, it was 40 years of wedded bliss, so we booked back in October after being warned that rental cars sell out months in advance.
We chose United. But just days after the war with Iran broke out, United – typically – canceled flights until mid-June, four days after our planned departure. We acted quickly – well, The Wife acted quickly – and switched to El Al. Still, it complicated the trip further.
Then came the more serious question: Do you leave the country when one of your sons or your son-in-law is in miluim in Lebanon, Gaza, or Syria?
My first instinct was no: you don’t leave when one of your children is serving. That may have worked before Oct. 7, when reserve duty meant a few weeks a year and could be planned around.
But today, when they have each logged upward of 350 days, saying you won’t leave while they are serving essentially means that you won’t leave at all.
Which, by the way, is hardly the end of the world. But what can I say? I like to travel.
So we went, even though as we were watching bears and sea otters, my youngest son was dodging drones in Lebanon.
“Go,” he said. “What are you going to be able to do by being here? And if, God forbid, something happens, you’ll come back.”
“That’s not the point,” I said. “How can we enjoy it if we are worrying about you?”
“You’ll figure out a way,” he teased.
And he was right. Sure, we worried, but less than if we were here. Distance, it turns out, has its advantages. I wasn’t glued to the news, tracking every development on his front.
Perhaps that was Alaska’s greatest gift. Not the calving glaciers, surfacing whales, or foraging bears, magnificent though they were. It was the realization that while Israel is the center of our world, it is not the center of everyone else’s. Every now and then, regaining that perspective is refreshing. ■
I’m typically pretty wordy. But just watch the video.
Disclaimer: Matt Addington is a professional. These bears grazed toward him from 100 yards away while he held tight. Do not try this ever, under any circumstances, or you will likely spend the rest of your time on this earth as bear poop.
Matt Addington is an incredible professional photographer, and I can say that from personal experience. He’s captured images of me in rough shape and somehow made them stunnin’. The Minnesota-based photographer and filmmaker has built a career telling outdoor stories, and his latest bear video proves he knows exactly where to point a camera.
Places like Katmai National Park in Alaska (where this video was taken) can offer unusually close encounters with brown bears, thanks in part to abundant food and tightly managed visitor access. That doesn’t make encounters like this casual or safe to imitate.
Addington is an extremely experienced outdoorsman, and he was photographing with professional guides Scott and Jackie Stone. For people hoping to photograph bears this way, a guided wildlife photography tour is one of the safest ways to do it. Do not try this in Yellowstone or your local national forest.
The bears were grazing nearly 100 yards away when the group set up. They stayed put as the animals continued feeding and gradually moved closer, resulting in some incredible footage and a once-in-a-lifetime photo.
I can only hope he wore his brown pants under his waders.
Alaska
Black bear breaks into Alaskan mall, eats a peach and relieves itself on floor before leaving: video
Can bearly believe it!
A black bear was caught on camera seemingly running errands at a local shopping mall in Anchorage, Alaska over the weekend.
The bear entered the commissary mall at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson around 9 a.m. Sunday, KTUU reported, citing a JBER spokesperson.
Wild footage shows the young cub strolling through the commissary’s automatic doors and exploring all that the mall had to offer.
The hungry bear stole and ate a piece of fruit before emptying its bowels on the hallway floor on its way out of the building.
Kory Godbout, who works at the barber shop on the military base, was waiting for his first customer of the day when he spotted the furry intruder traveling through the automatic doors.
“My coworker, who is cutting hair in front of me, she yelled, ‘Bear!’” Godbout recalled.
“And I looked up from my phone and the bear was walking into the barber shop right in front of me,” the barber said. “And we all ran into the break room and shut the door behind us.”
After a few minutes, Godbout and his coworkers emerged from the break room and followed the out-of-place bear into the commissary, where it took a peach from the grocery store and ate it.
The barber recalled that a few onlookers were “going big to try and scare” the bear out of the grocery store.
But all of a sudden, the black bear returned to the barber shop.
“By that time, we were able to run back to the shop and then lock the door,” Godbout said.
“And then we were watching him from the window and then that’s when he decided to, you know, use the restroom in the hallway.”
Officers from Conservation Law Enforcement attended the peculiar grizzly scene and were able to direct the wild animal towards a river and into the woods, according to the JBER spokesperson.
JBER’s wildlife program manager Colette Brandt said in a press release that the bear had triggered the automatic doors and that Sunday’s events were entirely incidental, KTUU reported.
While there has been a decline in bear-related calls since the military base installed bear-resistant dumpsters, seven bears have been put down at JBER for public safety over the past year.
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