Early Saturday morning, a man broke into an antique store in South Anchorage and walked away with tens of thousands of dollars worth of ivory and other Alaska Native artifacts.
Late Saturday evening, the suspect was arrested.
Employees of Duane’s Auction Market arrived at work at 9 a.m. Saturday and found the front glass window smashed. Security footage from the store shows a man in a black trench coat broke in around 5:30 a.m. Saturday.
He grabbed ivory artifacts, including a large ivory tusk, wrapped them up in a rug and made off in a late 90s sedan.
Anchorage Police put a call out for the suspect, sending photos of the man and his car out to the public.
Then, Saturday evening Airport Police responded to a welfare check.
An older man was asking for gas money. When Airport Police arrived they found 60-year-old Timothy Hayes in his 1999 green Ford Contour. In the backseat of Hayes’s care was the rolled up rug with a large ivory tusk sticking out.
Hayes was arrested by the Anchorage Police on charges of burglary, theft and criminal mischief. The Alaska Native artifacts were seized by the police as evidence.
Emily Russell is the voice of Alaska morning news as Alaska Public Media’s Morning News Host and Producer.
Originally from the Adirondacks in upstate New York, Emily moved to Alaska in 2012. She skied her way through three winters in Fairbanks, earning her Master’s degree in Northern Studies from UAF.
Emily’s career in radio started in Nome in 2015, reporting for KNOM on everything from subsistence whale harvests to housing shortages in Native villages. She then worked for KCAW in Sitka, finally seeing what all the fuss with Southeast, Alaska was all about.
Back on the road system, Emily is looking forward to driving her Subaru around the region to hike, hunt, fish and pick as many berries as possible. When she’s not talking into the mic in the morning, Emily can be found reporting from the peaks above Anchorage to the rivers around Southcentral.
