American Prosecutor Killed in Micronesia After Running With Dog: Reports

FBI agents are flying to the Federated States of Micronesia, a country spread across the western Pacific Ocean, after an American prosecutor was shot and killed. (Google Maps)

FBI agents are flying to the Federated States of Micronesia, a country spread across the western Pacific Ocean, after an American prosecutor was shot and killed.

Rachelle Bergeron was shot three times about 7:30 p.m. on Monday when she was jogging on Yap island, reported the Australia Broadcasting Corporation.

Bergeron was shot at close range and was taken to a nearby hospital where she was later pronounced dead, said Yap Memorial State Hospital medical chief of staff Bodunrin Mandela in the report.

“She was dead on arrival. It was too late already,” Mandela told the ABC.

The woman had moved to Yap in 2015 after she was hired as Assistant Attorney-General and was promoted to Acting Attorney-General in 2019. She was originally from Wisconsin and had worked in India, Washington, and New York, according to reports.

Rachelle Bergeron in a 2015 photo. (Yap State Government )

In the incident, the New York Daily News reported, Bergeron’s dog was also shot and killed.

An investigation into the murder is currently underway.

Julie Hartup, another pal, said that Bergeron wanted to return home to the United States in the future.

“She had a fun laugh; she loved her dogs; she loved going running; she really cared about the community,” the NY Daily News quoted Hartup as saying. “She was trying her hardest to do the best job she could, and ultimately somebody took her life for being so good at her job.”

In a statement, the small nation confirmed to Bergeron was “recently deceased as the result of an alleged homicide,” and they promised a “thorough investigation.”

Director of Civic Affairs Constantine Yow said it’s unclear if her murder was politically motivated. Reports said that officials believe the shooter acted alone.

Facts About Crime in the United States

Violent crime in the United States has fallen sharply over the past 25 years, according to both the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) (pdf).

The rate of violent crimes fell by 49 percent between 1993 and 2017, according to the FBI’s UCR, which only reflects crimes reported to the police.

The violent crime rate dropped by 74 percent between 1993 and 2017, according to the BJS’s NCVS, which takes into account both crimes that have been reported to the police and those that have not.

The FBI recently released preliminary data for 2018. According to the Preliminary Semiannual Uniform Crime Report, January to June 2018, violent crime rates in the United States dropped by 4.3 percent compared to the same six-month period in 2017.

While the overall rate of violent crime has seen a steady downward drop since its peak in the 1990s, there have been several upticks that bucked the trend. Between 2014 and 2016, the murder rate increased by more than 20 percent, to 5.4 per 100,000 residents, from 4.4, according to an Epoch Times analysis of FBI data. The last two-year period that the rate soared so quickly was between 1966 and 1968.