Police are investigating as a homicide the death of a 39-year-old Anchorage woman found in a tent in South Anchorage on Wednesday morning after a night of drinking with her boyfriend.
The death of Betsy Chuitt was reported by the boyfriend, Christopher Lokanin, who spent the night in the tent beside her, according to police spokesman Lt. Dave Parker.
Officers found no signs of foul play at the scene on Toloff Street in a mixed residential and commercial neighborhood, but police have decided to investigate it as a homicide until they learn otherwise, Parker said.
The report of the death came just hours after the Anchorage Assembly passed an ordinance Tuesday night allowing city employees to clear homeless camps after giving camp occupants five days' notice. The American Civil Liberties Union had argued for 10 days' notice.
The measure was part of a larger response by the city reacting to the deaths of more than 20 people outdoors in city camps, greenbelts, woods and trash bins in the past 13 months. Most died of natural causes or alcohol-related problems.
The measure passed 10-1, with only Assemblyman Patrick Flynn dissenting.
"These campers are using municipal property illegally and our police have every right to shut them down," Mayor Dan Sullivan said in a prepared statement on Wednesday supporting the vote.
"Illegal campers sometimes engage in hazardous activities that have detrimental impacts to the neighborhoods they inhabit," the mayor said.
On Wednesday, police responded about 4:30 a.m. to a wooded area west of Toloff, between 88th Avenue and Abbott Road, after Lokanin reported he had found Chuitt dead, Parker said. The boyfriend woke up and she was already unresponsive and cold, Parker said.
On Wednesday afternoon, only police roamed the campsite. Sandwiched between a strip mall and residences, the small patch of woods is barely big enough to hide a homeless camp just out of view from the street. Two tents were set up in the camp adjacent to each other.
Lokanin told police that Chuitt had recently been experiencing health problems. Her body was transported to the State Medical Examiner's Office for an autopsy, police said. Police would not discuss any health problems.
Nobody has been charged in her death.
Chuitt, also known as Betsy Jensen, was off the streets temporarily last summer, according to a story about the homeless deaths in the Daily News last August in which she was quoted. She wondered if there was someone out there killing the homeless, but she also recognized the dangers of drinking, the story said.
Last summer she ended up in the hospital because of drinking too much, she said at the time. Chuitt was drinking a bottle of vodka a day, trying to numb her grief over the death of her son, she told the Daily News reporter.
In November 2007, Chuitt's son, 16-year-old Mychael, went out the window of a fourth-floor condominium in South Anchorage and was found bloody and unconscious outside. He died the next day. Police said there's no evidence he was pushed. His mother was not convinced.
Chuitt also told the reporter last year that it's too easy for street people to get lost in the system even when they want help. But, "it's my fault too," she said in the story. "I chose alcohol over everything else."
Find Megan Holland online at adn.com/contact/mholland or call 257-4343.
By MEGAN HOLLAND
mholland@adn.com