A Marshall man has been arrested for killing a 62-year-old woman Monday morning.
Marshall is a village of about 350 people on the lower Yukon.
Nick Zito is a sergeant with the Alaska State Troopers in Aniak. He says troopers from Aniak and St. Mary’s responded early Monday morning.
“They responded to a report of a death at a residence there in Marshall,” said Zito, “and they subsequently investigated and found that an adult female had been shot at the house there.”
Zito says by the time troopers arrived, a former Marshall Village Police Officer had already detained the shooter, 31-year-old Nick Coffee.
Troopers allege that Coffee shot and killed 62 year old Anna Rossman in bed as she slept.
“It was all family members involved in this particular case,” said Zito. “The victim was actually his father’s fiancée.”
Troopers say Coffee admitted to shooting Rossman with a .22 caliber rifle and said he only stopped shooting because he ran out of bullets.
Coffee was charged with first- and second-degree murder and arraigned in a St. Mary’s court Tuesday. The next of kin of the victim have been notified, and the body sent to Anchorage for autopsy.
According to a report released this month by the Violence Policy Center, the rate of men murdering women in Alaska was the second highest in the nation and more than double the national average in 2013. That year, eight women were murdered in Alaska, all by men they knew.
Hannah Colton is a reporter at a in Dillingham.
