A woman’s welfare check on a client turned into a tragedy when she discovered a young boy dead in an apartment — with his mom and younger sister nowhere to be found.
The scenario, which authorities have called “devastating,” unfolded in Fairbanks, Alaska, on Friday Feb. 7, the Fairbanks Police Department (FPD) said in a Feb. 8 press release shared on Facebook.
The FPD responded to the apartment of Heather Alexie, 36, after receiving a “call for service regarding a suspicious death,” police said. The caller told authorities she had not heard from Heather, a client of hers, “for quite some time,” so she went to her apartment to check on her and her two children.
“Upon entering,” police said, the woman “discovered a child deceased inside the apartment.”
After arriving at the scene, investigators determined that the child — who was later identified as Heather’s 6-year-old son, Peter Alexie — had been a victim of a homicide. Meanwhile, Heather, as well as her 5-year-old daughter, Renee Alexie, “were not at the scene and could not be located in the Fairbanks area,” police said
FPD officers tracked Heather’s phone near Anchorage and — because of members of the public who responded to a “Missing Persons/Suspicious Circumstances” alert police issued for the pair — pinpointed her exact location later the same day.
With help from the Anchorage Police Department (APD), Heather and Renee were located by Saturday evening, the FPD shared in a Facebook update. They were found “unharmed,” police said.
