Anchorage police are sharing a new photo of someone thought to have poisoned Star, the beloved city-dwelling reindeer that died earlier this month.
In a Facebook post Monday, police officials shared an image of a person wearing dark clothes near the reindeer, apparently reaching toward the ungulate.
“Do you recognize the suspect in this photo?” the post said. “Maybe their outline looks familiar, or someone has bragged about involvement.”
Star’s owner, Albert Whitehead, said multiple break-ins occurred earlier this year at the reindeer’s enclosure, just off the Delaney Park Strip near downtown Anchorage. The Anchorage Daily News reported that Star was briefly taken from the enclosure on Feb. 20, with police sharing surveillance video of the incident.
The photo police released this week was taken near Star’s home the same night as the surveillance video, by a witness who had been traveling and only recently sent the photo to investigators, police spokesman Christopher Barraza said.
Shortly before the photo was taken, Barraza said, the photographer saw the suspect rummaging in the back of a white SUV.
“They took something out that looked similar to, like something you'd break open an enclosure with,” Barraza said. “(The photographer) saw this person come back, rummage again, and then they had pulled out another thing that looks similar to, maybe like a spray bottle, and left again.”
Whitehead told Alaska Public Media that a day later, on Feb. 21, he confronted a man who was spraying an unknown substance onto Star, then into Star’s face. The man ran away, and the reindeer developed pneumonia soon afterward.
Star was euthanized April 1.
In an interview, Whitehead said he first saw the new photo from police Tuesday morning. He did not know if the suspect in the photo was the same man he confronted.
“They're very similar. Yeah, same dress and everything,” Whitehead said. “Yes, they look similar, but I wasn't sure that they’re the same.”
Asked how he felt about the case after police released the photo, Whitehead had a single response: “Hope to find the guy.”
The latest Star was the seventh local reindeer to bear the name. Any plans for a new namesake are on hold until the suspect is behind bars, Whitehead said.
“Currently we do not feel safe about putting another animal out there,” he said.
Police are still waiting on a final necropsy report to determine how the reindeer died, Barraza said. But the pneumonia was most likely caused by whatever the suspect sprayed on Star.
Barraza said that after speaking with Whitehead, police believe the suspect is a younger white male, who was wearing “very clean white shoes” when the photographer saw him.
“They were wearing a mask and a hoodie, so we couldn't really get a lot of their facial features from (the new photo),” he said.
Police have received numerous requests online to digitally alter the photo released Monday for clarity, but Barraza said doing so could compromise any case against the suspect.
“If, for some reason, we were able to identify this person from this photo, if it was an edited photo it would not hold up in a court of law,” he said.
Police ask anyone with information about the suspect in the image to email Officer Samuel McGill.