Anchorage police help BIA unit search for man, 51, missing since July in a Pine Ridge case

Anchorage police are helping a federal unit search for Peter Wesley, a 51-year-old man who has been missing since July 1 and is known to be in the Anchorage area.

The Anchorage Police Department posted the request Wednesday on behalf of the Bureau of Indian Affairs Missing and Murdered Unit. The last known contact with Wesley was at the Anchorage Gospel Rescue Mission in late September, according to the department's notice.

Wesley is 5 feet 8 inches tall, weighs 165 pounds and has brown hair and eyes.

The bureau asks anyone who sees him to call its hotline at 1-833-560-2065. Tips can also go to [email protected] or by texting BIAMMU and the tip to 847411.

The Oglala Sioux Tribe-Pine Ridge Department of Public Safety in South Dakota referred the case to the bureau, the department said. The notice does not say where Wesley went missing.

The Missing and Murdered Unit is part of the bureau's Office of Justice Services. It investigates missing and murdered cases involving American Indians and Alaska Natives. The bureau created the unit in 2021, according to testimony by Charles Addington, principal director of the Office of Justice Services, to two U.S. House Natural Resources subcommittees on July 14. Addington told the subcommittees that about 1,485 missing persons cases involving American Indians and Alaska Natives were active in the FBI's national crime database as of June 30.