A man armed with a rifle foiled what authorities say was an attempted mass murder in Alaska earlier this month.
On May 16, 19-year-old Bryan Nicolai broke into the Public Safety Building in Kwethluk, a remote city of just over 700 residents located about 400 miles west of Anchorage. Nicolai activated the building’s fire alarm system before breaking into one of the building’s offices. There, he found a ballistic vest, a helmet, and multiple rifles, which he staged throughout the building, according to an Alaska State Trooper incident report.
Community residents began responding to the fire alarm, including Village Public Safety Officers (VPSO), who do not carry firearms on patrol. Officer Tiger Lee was the first to respond to the incident, and he told Alaska Public Radio (APR) that Nicolai pointed a rifle at him and pulled the trigger.
“I believe he wasn’t aware that the rifle was empty, and I could have been shot,” Lee said.
Nicolai grabbed another rifle and began firing Lee’s direction while the officer hid behind a shipping container.
That’s when Casey Thompson stepped in and ended the incident without firing a shot.
“A community member that initially arrived and observed what was happening, fled the area, returned with a rifle and was able to talk Nicolai into lowering his weapon and lay on the ground,” according to the police report.
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Lee expressed gratitude that Thompson had a gun, APR reported, and he thinks he and his fellow officers should be able to carry them.
“If we had access to firearms, we’d be able to handle more of these scenarios on our own,” Lee said.
Kwethluk Public Safety Administrative Chief Nicolai Joseph told APR that none of the ten officers in his village carry firearms. Some carry batons and pepper spray, but others only have handcuffs.
Deputy Chief David Berezkin said that officers do not carry firearms because the required training is too expensive. The training takes two to three months in the lower 48, and Joseph said that the city can’t afford to be sued for improper use of force.
Berezkin also pointed out that incidents involving guns are rare in the village, and that sometimes the presence of a gun can escalate rather than deescalate the situation.
“We don’t deal with this every day, you know?” Berezkin said.
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Lee also believes he could have talked Nicolai down if Thompson hadn’t stepped in. He told APR that his previous experience dealing with people who want to harm themselves has taught him to ask questions and convince them that he’s there to help.
“What are they feeling? Why are they feeling that?” Lee said. “And if there’s anything I can do to help. That I can do, or my fellow officers, or my fellow community members can do to help them feel better.”
Thompson declined to talk with local media about the incident and has not responded to GunsAmerica’s request for comment.
Yes, let’s talk about your feelings.
What are you feeling?
I feel like shooting someone.
Why are you feeling that way?
Cause I’m the bad guy stupid.
Is there anything I can do to make you feel better?
Yes, stand up straight so I’ll have an easy target.
That’s the kind of liberal crap that will get you killed. If that gun had been loaded the officer could have been killed.
Having unarmed VPSOs is now and will always be a very stupid idea. It doesn’t take 3-4 months to train people in the proper use of a handgun, rifle or shotgun. The villages need to get beyond the fear of lawsuits. Get insurance. The “I could have talked him down” BS rarely works. Last year some of the cops I used to work with faced a man that just killed his wife. Trained negotiators talked for three hours, and the man blew up the house and sprayed bullets at the cops. Seven cops shot back, the house burned and continued to explode. Chit chat is for the birds. It rarely works unless you are pointing GUNS at the suspect.
Jim Cargill is the dumbazz. I guess the guy breaking in was there to sell girl scout cookies and was just trying on the helmet and vest to see what size he should buy. Then he picked up a rifle and pointed it at the officer because he was defending himself. Hiding the firearms was his way of playing hide and seek.
Sure you don’t need guns in most cases, nor do you need fire insurance on your house because most people’s houses don’t catch fire. Better be safe than sorry. Which is more important? Your house can be replaced, but you can’t.
This such a dumbazz story. You cannot have a “suspected mass murderer” until more than one person is killed by an individual. For DNFU, placing guns in various places does not make a person a suspected mass murderer. If no “murder” is committed, there is no suspect. The person in question was not a “suspect”, he was a “potential” murderer, as is true for every person alive. C. Lehman is absolutely correct…this was nothing but clik-bait, and the author should be ashamed of himself. Maybe he would like to go to work for CNN, as they seem to specialize in clik-bait news.
When you point a rifle at someone and pull the trigger on an empty chamber that is at the least aggravated assualt and could be attempted murder and he is a suspect. A lot depends on the interview with the suspect and what he tells you about his intentions, if interviewed properly. Also his placing of weapons about, can add to the ability to prosecute him and the fact that he attempted to shoot the first person arriving and then after finding a loaded rifle did begin shooting at him. I have been a cop for 29 years and don’t see any problem with prosecuting him for the crime. Once you take the first steps in planning and then carrying out a crime, even if it is stopped before you complete The plan, it is still a crime.
No. The SUSPECT committed burglary, theft, and assault. All felonies. He could have been shot out of his shoes for doing those things.
What firearms training has to take 2-4 months. My gosh, you live in Alaska for pete’s sake. We’re told Alaska is still the frontier and you don’t have weapons?? Bring someone in from outside, ex-military or something. Set up a training program in your own department, this is just a stupid reason to not have firearms for the officers.
VPSOs would not have to go out of state to train. They are already trained at the trooper academy in Sitka. If a village has VPOs, they are trained in Sitka as well and do carry firearms. The VPSOs work for the state and their training does not cost the villages anything. So the village has no real decision-making power over the VPSO or whether he has a gun or not. As far as there being 10 officers in a town of 700, I would be surprised if there were more than one or two VPSOs, so the others were likely very informal VPOs with no training at all, likely paid by the town only for temporary work, like watching a prisoner until the troopers fly in to arrest him.
The state is moving toward arming VPSOs.
Actually, DS, VPSOs work for the tribal non profit. Each non profit has a VPSO program. They get money from the state, but the officers are employees of the non profit. TCC, Kawerak, Maneluq, are examples of the non profits. When a VPSO is placed in a town, the city has to cover any insurance expenses and the increased cost of a policy covering firearm use makes it too costly for VPSOs to carry a firearm. VPOs are employed by the tribe. Each village is it’s own tribe. You DO NOT want VPOs carrying firearms!!!
Doing police work should require training and GUNS.
You don’t deal with a fire every day either but you have a fire department.
Maybe they should cut there fire dept. funding so they can train these security officers.
“Berezkin also pointed out that incidents involving guns are rare in the village, and that sometimes the presence of a gun can escalate rather than deescalate the situation.” Typical progressive liberal perspective.
The whole article did nothing but make excuses for why they don’t need or carry guns, yet this incident says otherwise.
Odd that security members aren’t at least lightly armed.
How does this make the suspect a mass murderer? Stop it with the click bait already.
It was plainly stated n the article that “multiple rifles, which he staged throughout the building” you don’t need to place multiple rifles in multiple areas to shoot a single person. You only need to do this if you are planning an extended action, in which you are moving around to multiple firing stations. As such this is pretty well proof of a plan to harm multiple people.
BULL! It mentioned how this dipwad fied on the first guy to respond but didn’t hit anything, maybe he just knew he was a poor shot and needed several guns to hit one guy. Or maybe he just wanted to initiate an incident without actually hitting or killing anyone.