State prosecutors have declined to file charges against the Anchorage police officers who shot and killed an armed man after a domestic dispute in May.
That’s despite video evidence contradicting an initial police account of the moments before the shooting.
Officers’ shooting of 34-year-old Kristopher Handy outside a Sand Lake apartment complex May 13 prompted an investigation by the state Office of Special Prosecutions, which released its findings Wednesday morning. The public release of the investigation findings, which were included in a letter to Anchorage Police Chief Sean Case dated Friday, came Wednesday shortly before Anchorage police held an 11 a.m. news conference releasing officers’ body camera footage of the incident.
In the 21-page letter, Senior Assistant Attorney General John Darnall includes previously unreleased information on the events leading up to the shooting, as well as imagery of Handy from a police car’s dashboard camera just before he was shot.
Darnall’s decision means Sgt. Noel Senoran and Officers Jacob Jones, Jacob Ostolaza and James Stineman will not be charged in the shooting. Per department policy, Chief Case said Anchorage police would be conducting their own investigation of the officers’ conduct.
Police say the call that led to Handy’s death started out simply: a disturbance between a man and a woman, reported to Anchorage police at about 2:15 a.m. on May 13.
But as officers headed to the apartment complex on Bearfoot Drive, off Northwood Street near Strawberry Road, dispatchers told them that the man – later identified as Handy – had left the building carrying a long gun.
As officers arrived, they split up into two teams and approached the building. An APD statement – read verbatim to reporters by then-Chief Designee Bianca Cross at a news conference just hours later – summarized what police said happened next.
“As they advanced towards the apartment complex on foot, the adult male raised a long gun towards the officers,” police said. “Four officers discharged their weapons, striking the adult male at least once in the upper body.”
Officers and medics performed first aid on Handy, but police said he died at the scene.
Cross confirmed that the officers involved in the shooting had been wearing body cameras. Police didn’t immediately release their video, the first such footage of a fatal shooting by Anchorage police since officers started to be outfitted with body cameras late last year, as the state conducted its investigation.
But the public got a first look at the shooting days later from a doorbell camera at another apartment in the Bearfoot Drive complex. That footage never shows Handy raising his gun at officers.
According to Darnall’s letter, when police arrived at the apartment complex, Handy came “charging” out of an upstairs apartment onto an exterior walkway with a pistol-grip, short-barrel shotgun.
“Handy raised this shotgun straight in the air above his head and yelled (an expletive) at the officers,” Darnall said in the letter.
Darnall said Handy then moved “rapidly and purposefully” along the walkway and down a set of stairs, at one point facing other officers who were trying to flank his position.
“Handy quickly turned towards the officers who were stationed in and near the patrol vehicles while holding the shotgun,” Darnall said. “Handy stepped forward off the sidewalk and into the parking lot, and at that moment, multiple APD officers fired shots.”
Darnall said Handy dropped his gun after he was shot. An autopsy determined he had been struck 10 times in the shooting.
Darnall found that the investigation “generally corroborated officers’ accounts of the events.” He also determined that the officers were justified under state law in using deadly force against Handy, because they believed he posed a threat to their lives.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
Chris Klint is a web producer and breaking news reporter at Alaska Public Media. Reach him atcklint@alaskapublic.org.Read more about Chrishere.
