ANCHORAGE — Organizers of the Alaska Federation of Natives conference announced there was a death at the Saturday afternoon closing ceremony.
Anchorage Police Department spokeswoman Renee Oistad said the person jumped from the third-floor balcony of the Dena’ina Center, according to the Alaska Dispatch News. Oistad called the incident a suicide, but she gave few other details.
Kippy Lanz of Anchorage told the newspaper that she saw the incident happen.
“He jumped,” Lanz said. “He went right over the railing and went down … It happened so fast.”
Shortly before 4 p.m., firefighters and police officers surrounded the body with black curtains, the Dispatch News reported. Security also put panels around the edge of the balcony. The newspaper reported that police and security evacuated people from the first floor of the convention center and weren’t letting people back inside.
Delegates in the concourse outside the main assembly room rushed to look over the clear glass railing. Some cried and hugged each other.
A banquet that the group planned to hold at the convention center Saturday evening was cancelled.
Co-chairwoman Ana Hoffman of Bethel announced the death to delegates. She asked for a moment of silence before leading a prayer.
Hoffman said a similar death has occurred before at the three-story convention center, which hosted President Barack Obama for a global warming conference in August.
On Thursday, speakers at the conference, Alaska’s largest yearly gathering of indigenous people, lamented the disproportionately high rate of suicides among Alaska Natives, including a recent string of suicides in one village.
