A 34-year-old Anchorage man died early Saturday morning, likely adding to the rising toll of drunk driving deaths in Alaska's largest city.
Stephen Christopher Kenny, 34, was driving his 1995 Ford F-150 pickup east on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue when he lost control of his vehicle on a curve approaching Tudor Road just before 3 a.m. The pickup, which police investigators estimate was traveling 68 to 75 mph, went over an embankment and through a wooden fence before stopping.
Medics pronounced Kenny dead at the scene of the crash, and an unnamed passenger was not seriously injured, police say. The cause of Kenny's death was not given in a press release, and traffic investigators were unreachable Saturday.
The posted speed limit in that section of roadway is 35 mph.
Kenny's passenger told police that the duo had been at a South Anchorage party, where both had been drinking.
If true, the collision "indicates the fifth possible DUI fatality this year," according to a press release from Anchorage police.
Kennys only previous alcohol-related offense was a minor consuming alcohol charge in 1998, according to online court records. He also was charged with misdemeanor reckless driving in June 2006, but that charge was dropped.
Just hours earlier at a somber rally to recognize the victims of drunk driving, police chief Mark Mew said that his force would step up efforts to stop drunk drivers. With the help of 40 Anchorage Citizen Academy alumni -- an 11-week course that teaches about basic police work -- who volunteered to put more eyes on the road, Mew vowed to reduce drunk driving incidents. "We need to channel the anger and grief into something that will produce real results," he said. "Our goal is zero deaths and injuries."
A week ago, a drunk driver allegedly veered off the roadway in South Anchorage and killed two teenage girls, 15-year-olds Brooke McPheters and Jordyn Durr, as the girls were walking back from a nearby mall after shopping for back-to-school items. Reports indicated that the driver, 31-year-old Stacey Allen Graham, had three times the legal limit of blood alcohol content at the time of the crash.
Magnets with pictures of the four recent DUI victims will adorn patrol cars in an effort to hasten the heightened effort. Police have already slapped magnets with pictures of Citari Townes-Sweatt behind the backdoors of their cruisers. Sweatt died when Lane Douglas Wyatt, a Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson airman, allegedly ran a red light early morning June 30 and t-boned the 20-year-old; she was the city's first alcohol-related vehicle death in the city in 14 months.