Page 6 - Olivia Ebertz News Today

Many travelers who had been stuck in Bethel for weeks over the holidays have made it home to their villages on Grant Aviation flights. Now, a new batch of passengers is stranded. Grant is working to get these passengers home, and the backlog of mail delivered.

Many travelers who had been stuck in Bethel for weeks over the holidays have made it home to their villages on Grant Aviation flights. Now, a new batch of passengers is stranded. Grant is working to get these passengers home, and the backlog of mail delivered.

On Dec. 13, 20-year-old Jordan Mark of Quinhagak pled guilty to the 2020 murder of 10-year-old Ida “Girlie” Aguchak. His admission of guilt was part of a plea deal with prosecutors, who in turn reduced his minimum sentence.As a warning, this story explicitly references instances of sexual assault and murder.

Over the weekend, an Akiachak teacher was charged with sexually assaulting minors. John Mark Hammonds was arrested at his residence in Akiachak on Oct. 17. This marks the fourth time the Yupiit School district has seen allegations like this in the past decade. Hammonds is being charged with eight counts of felony sexual assault.

During the Oct. 12 Bethel City Council meeting, four newly elected council members were sworn in. Then the council voted to renew a series of pandemic mitigation measures, including a mask mandate. The measures passed easily, but the mask mandate came up against some rare opposition from an audience member and a new council member.

Mark Springer has sat on city council for three full terms. He also sat for two shorter terms. He’s been in Bethel for about 20 years, and in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta for about 40 years in total. One thread in Springer’s recent city council work has been attention to Native issues and politics.

Olivia is a News Reporter for KYUK. Before coming to Bethel, she worked in film in New York City. Her documentary films have screened at festivals worldwide. In 2020 she was an artist-in-residence in Petrozavodsk, Russia. She speaks English, Norwegian, Italian, Spanish, and Russian with decreasing fluency in that order.

KYUK is running a series of profiles on Bethel City Council candidates ahead of the Oct. 5 election. There are six candidates running for four open seats,…

Each weekday, the community is invited to "Coffee@KYUK" to discuss news and information relative to Bethel and the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.

Tamryn Hodge is a girl with a sweet tooth who enjoys talking about food. Tamryn grew-up in Bethel and graduated from Barnard College in 2021. She joins KYUK as an intern and the host of the podcast and radio show, "A Bite Out of Bethel".