Public Media for Alaska's Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Bethel Police charge suspect in AVCP Rural Housing Authority fire that killed 3

Courtesy
/
Michaela Mike

Police have arrested a suspect in connection with last week’s fire that killed three people in Bethel. Police have charged 35 year-old Adam Andrew with 11 felony counts and six misdemeanor counts. Among the most serious charges are three counts of murder in the second degree and one count of arson. Andrew has pleaded not guilty to his misdemeanor counts and has not yet entered a plea for the felonies. He is being held at the Yukon Kuskokwim Correctional Center.

Police say Andrew started the fire that began around 4 a.m. on Aug. 12. Three people in an apartment died after they were trapped inside, and an additional five people were injured. The fire destroyed two units in a larger 31 unit apartment complex and damaged six units in total. Andrew lives in a unit near the ones that were most severely burned.

Investigator Skyler Smith wrote in a report that Andrew set a fire in the walkway between the two apartments that suffered the most damage while he was blackout drunk. In his report, Smith provided one eyewitness account from a 15-year-old who said that they saw Andrew start the fire. Other neighbors told Smith that they heard yelling outside before the fire started.

According to the report, officers first arrived on the scene to respond to reports of an intoxicated male laying outside. That was Andrew. When the first community service patrol officer arrived on the scene, he heard the "crackling of the fire" and reported it to the police dispatch. He told Smith that’s when Andrew got up and responded aggressively. Around the same time, other officers showed up and arrested Andrew.

According to Andrew’s own account told to Investigator Smith, Andrew began his night by finding a backpack with four bottles of vodka. He took two of them and started drinking them as he returned home. When he arrived at the apartments, he said that his wife would not let him in because he was too intoxicated. He went to a friend’s house on Akakeek St. and continued drinking.

At that point, Andrew told the officer that he blacked out. He remembers only arriving at the apartments and then waking up in police custody. During his interview with police, he told them that he did not set fire to the building. He also suggested that it could have been an electrical fire. He told Smith that he had issues with electricity in his own unit. The neighbors said that no sprinklers or fire alarms went off.

Andrew is scheduled to appear for a preliminary hearing on Aug. 23.

This article has been corrected to say that the person who provided the eyewitness account to Skyler Smith was 15, not 16.

Olivia was a News Reporter for KYUK from 2020-2022.
Related Content