On February 8, 2023, Timothy Snyder, a 41-year-old male from Selawik, Alaska, was shot at a residence in the village. Late that night, his body was found placed inside a tote at the local dump, a discovery that jolted a tight-knit community of fewer than a thousand people in the Kobuk River delta. By first light the next morning, investigators had flown in to Selawik to begin piecing together what happened, and Snyder's remains were sent to the state medical examiner in Anchorage for autopsy.
Within days, Alaska State Troopers named a suspect and made an arrest. They took into custody 47-year-old Lance Brickey, who was charged with second-degree murder, evidence tampering, and weapons misconduct connected to the death of Timothy Snyder, a 41-year-old male. Brickey was remanded to the Kotzebue jail as the case moved forward, and authorities emphasized that additional details were limited at that stage of the investigation.
Public safety updates and regional reporting repeated the core facts: Timothy Snyder, a 41-year-old male, died of a gunshot wound on February 8, 2023; his body was recovered in a tote at the dump the same night; and an arrest—naming 47-year-old Lance Brickey—followed swiftly afterward. Follow-up notices underscored the charges while noting that anyone charged is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty, and that investigators were continuing to develop the case.
In the months that followed, regional memorial listings and violence-tracking archives continued to record the loss of Timothy Snyder, a 41-year-old male from Selawik, on the date of February 8, 2023. Those records, echoing the contemporaneous reports, fixed the time and place and kept the focus on the village and the arrest that trailed the discovery at the dump.
