A 23-year-old man from Selawik died over the weekend after his snowmachine ran out of gas just two miles outside the Northwest Arctic Borough town, according to Alaska State Troopers.
Troopers said in an online dispatch that Chad Ticket left a relative’s house at about 6 a.m. Sunday, with word that he was missing reaching troopers at about 2 p.m. that afternoon. Searchers found Ticket’s body about three hours later on a snowmachine trail near Selawik, a community of about 750 people roughly 90 miles east of Kotzebue.
A troopers spokesman said a preliminary investigation determined that the fuel tank on Ticket’s snowmachine was empty, and that Ticket likely ran out of gas and walked away from the vehicle.
Ticket’s next of kin have been notified, troopers said. His body will be sent to the state medical examiner’s office for an autopsy.
