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As KNBA’s Rhonda McBride reports, the revelations come just ahead of Smith’s sentencing, set for Friday morning.
Warning: Some listeners may find details in this story disturbing
The images came from one of Brian Smith’s many cell phones and were included in a sentencing memorandum filed last week.
Prosecutors have asked for a 226-year sentence and included the photos in the sentencing memo to help make their case.
The photographs show a woman, possibly Alaska Native, on the ground, spattered with blood and dirt.
She appears to be either dead or unconscious.
Key evidence in Smith’s murder trial included cellphone videos and pictures Smith created while killing one of his known victims.
The images in the sentencing memo come from a cell phone police confiscated from Smith in 2019.
Although it’s been almost five years, police have yet to identify the woman in the newly released photographs.
The court filing also includes a sketch from a forensic artist to give a better idea of what the woman might have looked like, based on a composite of the cellphone images.
“I wish that more had been done in 2019 to identify this unknown woman.”
Michael Livingston is Unangan and active in Alaska’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous People’s movement.
While he’s glad to see that an artist’s sketch has finally been done, he says the criminal justice system has gone too far in releasing the actual photos of the woman.
“She someone’s daughter. She might be someone’s sister. She might be someone’s mother. It’s disrespectful to release these actual images.”
The defense has also objected to the use of the photos in the sentencing and says there’s no way to know whether or not they were staged.
In an email, Assistant Attorney General Brittany Dunlop said police have been trying to identify the woman since they discovered the pictures, which they typically don’t release during an ongoing investigation. But in this case, Dunlop said, they were attached to the sentencing memo “to give the court a better picture of the full pattern of behavior.”
In February, a jury took less than two hours to convict Smith in the deaths of Veronica Abouchuk and Kathleen Jo Henry.
Members of the Navajo Nation will gather on Saturday to commemorate the anniversary of the uranium spill.
KUNM’s Jeanette DeDios has more.
On July 16th, 1979, a dam ruptured and released more than a thousand tons of radioactive waste and nearly 95 million gallons of toxic radioactive wastewater spilled into the nearby Rio Puerco and surrounding Navajo Nation lands.
“And the folks that live in the area tell stories about being out herding their sheep and seeing this wave of green liquid come their way, you know, they weren’t warned about it, and many of them waded in it to get their livestock out and ended up with sores on their legs.”
Susan Gordon is a coordinator for the Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment.
She says the contaminants flowed downstream through Gallup and across nine Navajo chapters.
Radiation from the spill was detected as far as 80 miles downstream. As a result, communities around the spill have experienced health problems associated with radiation exposure.
Gordon says the mining company United Nuclear Corporation did little to clean up the radioactive waste.
“They sent a handful of people out with shovels and buckets to try to gather up this green sludge that was all through there. And that’s it. That’s all that was ever done.”
According to Stanford University, the company dug new drinking wells and removed about 1% of the estimated total spill material.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission permitted the company to resume operations five months later. The mine was abandoned in 1982.
The Church Rock spill is the third largest radioactive waste release globally, after the Fukushima disaster and the Chernobyl meltdown.
Gordon says they’re hoping to continue to educate people.
“But also to bring pressure on the National Institute of Health and our congressional delegation to provide more money for cleanup and for health research.”
The ceremony will have an opening prayer and a walk to the spill site.
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