Police: Man threatens employees at Anchorage GCI office, causes internet outages

A man broke into GCI offices in Midtown Anchorage Sunday morning, threatening employees and causing "significant damage to infrastructure" before being taken into custody, according to the Anchorage Police Department.

The damage led to statewide internet and phone outages, including to 911 services, APD said.

In a statement, GCI said the person broke into the Denali Towers building at 9:50 a.m. Sunday. Police initially wrote that they responded "to a report of a man with a knife" at the building more than an hour later, at 11:04 a.m. Police later said that "(t)he weapon involved in the incident was not a knife as it was originally believed to be," without specifying what, if any, type of weapon was actually used.

"No employee was harmed in this incident," GCI said in a statement.

The suspect, identified by Anchorage police as 24-year-old Brodie Lee, was taken into custody, police said. He was charged with single counts of first- and second-degree criminal mischief, first- and second-degree burglary, and third- and fourth-degree assault.

Court records showed a felony case had been opened against a Brodie Eguires-Lee, 24, in Anchorage Sunday. Eguires-Lee has no serious criminal history in Alaska court beyond a 2013 misdemeanor conviction for driving with a suspended license. Lee is expected to arraigned Monday afternoon.

"At this time, there is no known connection between the individual and GCI," the company said.

The GCI offices targeted are in Denali Tower North, a 17-story office building on the 2500 block of Denali Street in Midtown Anchorage, between Fireweed Lane and Northern Lights Boulevard. It was not clear how Lee entered the building. The street-level front entrance requires a keycard for entry and was locked on Sunday afternoon, with no obvious signs of damage. A private security guard was in the parking lot.

GCI did not answer questions about how Lee was able to allegedly enter the building and access the telecommunications infrastructure. While police called the damage to GCI equipment "significant," the company did not answer questions about what was damaged and the process or timeline for fixing it.

The company also did not answer questions about the extent of the statewide outages reported by police, including which communities were without 911 service and for how long. As of 4 p.m., technicians had restored all GCI services, the company said.

The break-in comes less than two months after an April incident in which a person or people intentionally damaged a GCI fiber-optic cable, causing widespread outages in Alaska.