An 18-year-old died when he was shot while bird hunting with two other young people in Nightmute on April 26. “Joseph George was shot in the head at close range by a minor as a goose flew by,” Alaska Department of Public Safety Information Officer Gretchen Weiss-Brooks wrote in an email to KYUK.
She says the three young people were “hunting a few hundred feet from the Nightmute airport.” Village health aides responded to the scene, and “for the death to be officially declared,” the health aides contacted the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation to confirm that George was dead.
Troopers received a call at 7:20 p.m. that evening alerting them to the death and arrived in Nightmute the next day at 12 p.m. Troopers are classifying the incident as a hunting accident and are continuing to investigate. Weiss-Brooks said that troopers do not suspect suspicious activity and have not issued any citation related to this case.
George’s body has been sent to the State Medical Examiner’s Office in Anchorage for autopsy.
