FBI investigating deaths at Alaska Coast Guard Kodiak Island

AK island residents worry after C. Guard killings
Published April 14, 2012
Associated Press
ANCHORAGE, Alaska


Law officers assured residents of Alaska's Kodiak Island that they aren't in immediate danger following the shooting deaths of two workers at a Coast Guard communications station, but the fact that no one had been arrested left people on edge.

Wendy Cavender, a bartender at the B and B bar in Kodiak, a city about eight miles from the Coast Guard base, said residents are getting jumpy because they have few details about what happened.

"I just think they need to release all the information they have so people don't get crazy and paranoid, which might lead to violence," Cavender said.

"All anybody knows is that there is a shooter and that person might still be at large," Cavender said.

The Coast Guard on Friday identified the two victims as Richard Belisle and Petty Officer 1st Class James Hopkins. Belisle, 51, lived in Kodiak and was a retired Coast Guard chief petty officer working at the base as a civilian employee. Hopkins, 41, was an electronics technician from Vergennes, Vt.

Another Coast Guard member found the victims Thursday morning shortly after the two would have arrived for work at the station, which monitors radio traffic from ships and planes.
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