A man who pulled out a gun as Anchorage police were trying to detain him Monday night was shot and killed by officers, according to the police department.
He is the third armed man shot by Anchorage police in less than a month.
According to an Anchorage Police Department statement, officers had responded at about 9:30 p.m. Monday to reports of shots fired in the Fairview neighborhood. When officers arrived, someone in the area told them two men were involved in firing the shots in a parking lot of the Anchorage Senior Activity Center.
Police spoke with the men, the first of whom complied with them and was taken into custody, said the statement. Police say he was armed with a handgun.
Police said the second man “was not compliant.”
“As he reached into his clothing a K9 was deployed,” said the police statement. “While the K9 had hold of (the man, he) produced a handgun and ignored multiple commands to drop it. Three officers discharged their weapons, striking (him) in the upper body.”
The man was declared dead at the scene, police said. He hasn’t yet been named.
None of the officers or the K-9 were injured, said the police statement.
Few additional details were immediately available. A police spokeswoman said Tuesday the department would not be releasing additional information until a news conference, which had not yet been scheduled.
The department said under police policy, the officers who fired on the man will be named in three days and have been placed on administrative leave for four days. The state Office of Special Prosecutions will investigate the shooting for any violations of state law, after which APD Internal Affairs will examine the shooting for any violations of police policy.
The shooting comes just weeks after the May 13 death of another armed man shot by officers. Officers’ fatal shooting of Kristopher Handy outside a Sand Lake apartment complex has prompted increased scrutiny of police and calls for the release of officers’ body-camera footage, after a neighbor said her surveillance video contradicted police claims that he had raised a gun at them.
Over the weekend, officers also shot and wounded a murder suspect in the moments after a fatal shooting early Saturday outside a downtown bar. Kaleb Bourdukofsky, 22, is charged with killing 25-year-old Diego Joe and wounding a second man in that shooting.
Chris Klint is a web producer and breaking news reporter at Alaska Public Media. Reach him at cklint@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Chris here.
