On the night of February 25, 2024, in the wind-swept whaling village of Point Hope on Alaska's northwest coast, Alaska Native woman Molly Stone, age 39, was gunned down inside a home where friends and relatives gathered. Shots shattered the cold and the quiet around 11:30 p.m., and when officers arrived they found two people dead—Molly Stone, age 39, female, and another adult—and two men gravely wounded. The house sat along Agviq Street, a place of ordinary family life transformed in minutes into a crime scene that would ripple across one of the state's most tightly knit communities.
Authorities soon identified a suspect: a 16-year-old boy from the community. According to charging documents summarized by local and statewide outlets, witnesses said the teen entered the residence with a handgun and opened fire before fleeing on a four-wheeler across the snow and sea-ice darkness. Within minutes, his father escorted him to the police station. Prosecutors charged the youth as an adult with multiple counts, including first-degree murder and attempted murder, as investigators worked to piece together the sequence of events that ended the lives of Molly Stone, age 39, female, and another resident and left two others fighting for theirs.
The case advanced quickly into the courts. The accused—identified in court records as Guy Nashookpuk—was arraigned in Anchorage on a sweeping set of felony charges spanning first- and second-degree murder, attempted murder, assault, and burglary. He entered a not-guilty plea as a judge set bail at $1 million and scheduled further hearings, while authorities declined to publicly release a motive. In Point Hope, schools adjusted schedules and counselors arrived to help families process the violence that had claimed the life of Molly Stone, age 39, female, and shaken a village that calls itself Tikigaq, where kinship lines often run through every household.
Beyond the courtroom filings, simple memorial notices fixed Molly Stone, age 39, female, to a date and a place—February 25, 2024, Point Hope, Alaska—marking her among the victims of gun violence that night. In the weeks that followed, residents and Alaska Native organizations spoke about resilience and mutual care, even as they waited for answers that might never fully make sense of what happened. The official record remained stark: a late-winter Sunday, a home on Agviq Street, two people dead, two wounded, and a teenager under arrest to be tried as an adult for the killing of Molly Stone, age 39, female.
