Shots fired at worksite in Teller

A gravel laying project for a new housing development  two miles outside of Teller got off to a rocky start after a worker reportedly fired shots while the mayor of Teller Blanche Garnie and her 17-year-old daughter were nearby, returning home from berry picking, late last Thursday.
The two were in a spot referred to as Coalmine, land owned by the tribe, where many go to subsist. Garnie said knew that heavy equipment was there to prepare the site for a large housing project but she wasn’t aware that the work crew were staying in the trailers overnight.
“I wasn’t gonna let the equipment stop me from going back there. But if I knew people were back there then I wouldn’t have gone there in the first place,” Garnie told the Nugget.
Garnie and her daughter approached the gravel pit where the crew gets the material to lay down the pad for the housing development. That’s when they heard what they thought to be a gunshot.
According to Garnie, she yelled, used herself to shield her daughter and walked quickly back to their side-by-side to leave, when they heard another shot. “I wanted to keep going and be brave, because I thought he must be a bad shot or intoxicated, and we’re going to make it,” Garnie said. The mother and daughter left the scene unharmed but reported hearing the person who fired the gun say: “This is a good way to die,” as they made their exit.
Q Trucking is contracted by the Bering Straits Regional Housing Authority, or BSRHA, to lay the gravel at the worksite. The day after the incident a statement signed by Q Trucking owner Charles Reader was released on social media, stating that at “approximately 1:00 am our crew was asleep in their quarters located at the site and one was awakened by sounds of someone or something outside near our fuel truck.” According to the statement, the worker stepped out to investigate and let whoever or whatever know to leave the area four times. “He didn’t see anyone, nor did anyone identify themselves nor did he see anything leaving, he shot his weapon in the embankment in the direction the sounds were heard,” the statement reads.  “Being a former law enforcement officer of ten years, he knew proper protocol for the safe discharge of his weapon in response to the unknown situation he was in,” the statement said, which was confirmed by a representative of Q Trucking.
 “We are grateful everyone is okay, and we hope that in the future everyone will exercise caution in the work site area,” wrote Reader. “We support your right to subsist on your land but respectfully request your refrain from entering the work site to do so.” He went on to say that there are many large vehicles and pieces of equipment operating in the area and that there is a crew on site 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
“If you would like to visit the area it would be best to do it during the hours of operation for your and the crew’s safety. We would like to avoid any potential misunderstandings with your presence after hours in the future,” the statement says.
Shook up after the ordeal, Garnie contacted Alaska State Troopers to make a report.
When AST were contacted by the Nugget, trooper spokesperson Austin McDaniel said that the incident is still under investigation and no information could be made public.
The day after the incident Garnie visited the camp to speak with the crewmember who fired the shots. It was explained to her as a misunderstanding, as he thought she was there to take fuel from the campsite, according to Garnie. “I told him that I don’t have any grudges because he says he wasn’t aiming at me or my daughter. But I told him at the time I was very scared and then angry,” she said.
Garnie expressed her support for the construction and that she values the establishment of a new site for Teller, but stressed how the presence of a crew camp was not clearly communicated. “The Native Corporation president or somebody should have known to where they could warn the community. They could have let me know, and I would have just told people to leave these people alone,” she said.
Garnie also called her father, Joe Garnie, who echoed his and the community of Teller’s frustration about the discharge of a weapon near his daughter and granddaughter. He also deplored the recklessness of discharging shots. “A bullet can go a long ways. And there’s 25-30, homes right below, just a little way over. I mean, them people could’ve got a ricochet,” Joe said.
The work site is one mile south of the Coyote Creek Subdivision.
BSRHA works with tribes of Teller and Mary’s Igloo to implement the housing project. CEO of BSRHA Jolene Lyon said the construction was expected by the community after the project was approved by the tribes, which is their notice to proceed with work.
“Everybody knew we were going to start work,” Lyon said. “I guess, to be fair, the assumption of us doing site development was in play, but it’s our job to work on that work site. I don’t need permission from anybody. I have the notice to proceed already.”
Lyon acknowledged there were lessons learned for future projects, public announcements of the work site will be made clearer, and crew will be better informed of that the property is open to subsistence users.

The Project
The new subdivision site in Teller is a collaboration of BSRHA, Kawerak Transportation Department, Kawerak Community Planning and Development, Norton Sound Health Corporation, Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, the Teller Traditional Council and Native Corporation and Mary’s Igloo Tribe. The effort is known more succinctly as Teller Environmental Adaptation and Mitigation, or TEAM, housing project.
Eventually slated to be a 40-home subdivision with wide streets, electricity and potentially piped water and sewer, the site east of the airport aims to relocate families out of the flood zone of old site and the over-crowdedness of new site.
This summer the gravel is being laid and graded on the 16-acres, in the fall another layer of gravel will top it.
Ten homes are planned to be built there and potentially 20 will be moved, according to BSRHA Program Administrator Walter Rose. The 10 homes will be a combination of modular homes and Structural Insulated Package, SIP, homes that will lay waiting at the site during the winter for immediate construction once the snow has begun to melt next year.
Lyon said it is in the contract for any requests for proposals BSRHA puts out that contractors hire some of their workforce locally.  Construction and movement of homes is slated to begin and be completed before December 2025.