18-Year-Old Slashes 4 to Death in Alaska Fishing Town, Cops Say

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – A young man wielding a 5-inch knife stabbed four people to death in a small Alaska fishing and tourist town before officers subdued him with a stun gun, police said.

Jason Abbott, 18, was taken to the jail in Sitka on Tuesday and is awaiting charges, Police Chief Sheldon Schmitt said.

Officers found the bodies of three people just before noon at a two-story home just two blocks from the police station, police said. A fourth person found in the house later died at a hospital.

Abbott's relatives owned the home, police said, though they did not release their identities.

Police received a call from a man outside the house who told the dispatcher that there was a "guy outside stabbing people," Scmitt said. The dispatcher said she could hear people screaming in the background.

Investigators with the state crime lab in Anchorage have flown to the city of 9,000 people to help Sitka police, Schmitt said.

Abbott had been arrested Sunday on a domestic violence charge, police said. They had no other details of his criminal history and could not say whether he was still in school.

The public defender's office said they had not yet been assigned the case.

The town has not seen a murder for at least a decade.

"It's a tragedy for the community," Schmitt said. "It's a small town. Everybody knows everybody."

Sitka is on an island 600 miles southeast of Anchorage. The town, which cannot be reached by road, is a popular stop for cruise ships, receiving about 200,000 visitors each summer.