Anchorage police say officers shot and killed a teenage girl armed with a knife late Tuesday.
The shooting happened in a neighborhood on the 4800 block of East 43rd Avenue, near the Alaska Native Medical Center, according to a police statement.
At a brief news conference Wednesday morning, Police Chief Sean Case said that officers had been responding to a “disturbance” between two family members at about 11:30 p.m. Tuesday. The caller said her sister had threatened her with a knife.
Several officers responded, some of them entering the apartment the call came from, according to the police statement.
Officers gave the girl commands but she approached them still holding the knife, Case said. At that point, he said, two officers opened fire.
“One single officer fired multiple rounds,” he said. “A second officer fired a round with a less-lethal projectile.”
Police and medics treated the girl, but she died at a local hospital.
“The subject that was shot was a 16-year-old female,” Case said. “She would have started her junior year in high school on Thursday.”
Police declined to name the girl, due to her age, but family members later identified her as Easter Leafa.
She attended high school in the Anchorage School District, according to a statement from Superintendent Jharrett Bryantt.
“Our deepest condolences are with the families involved in this tragic situation,” he said.
Thursday is the first day of school in Anchorage, and Bryantt said there will be additional support services for impacted staff and students.
“We are working in partnership with the Anchorage Police Department,” he said. “We do not have any additional information to release at this time as this is an on-going investigation.”
During the news conference, Case called the shooting tragic.
“There’s no other way to describe it,” he said. “As police officers, we strive to protect human life and when we don’t meet that goal, there’s no other way to describe it then it’s tragic.”
Police say no one else in the apartment or any officers were injured.
Christina Konnig lives in an apartment building nearby. She watched Wednesday as officers walked in and out of the multi-level beige apartment complex where the shooting happened. She said she was shocked and angry that police killed a teenager.
“That’s pretty sad,” Konnig said. “I don’t get how APD is going to shoot a 16-year-old girl. They could’ve done a taser, not f*cking shooting them.”
Other community members also expressed outrage in the aftermath of the shooting. There was a flood of online comments on a video of the police news conference, many people mourning the loss of a young Alaskan and also questioning why police didn’t use nonlethal force.
Case said Anchorage Police Department policy calls for officers using less-lethal weapons to be backed up by others with lethal force. But, he added, officers have personal discretion in using those weapons.
“Each officer is making a determination to use the tool that they have with them based on the circumstances in front of them,” he said.
The teenager is the sixth person shot by Anchorage police since mid-May and she is the fourth person killed after the deaths of 34-year-old Kristopher Handy, 21-year-old Tyler May and 58-year-old Lisa Fordyce-Blair. State prosecutors have so far reviewed two of the fatal shootings, and declined to file criminal charges against the officers who shot Handy and May, saying the use of force was justified.
Case acknowledged the rising toll of shootings by Anchorage police this summer.
“We are committed to continue to look at our training, our tactics, as well as our supervision in these types of incidents to try to prevent future officer-involved shootings,” Case said.
The shooting was recorded on the officers’ body cameras, Case said, but the officers involved in the shooting had not yet been interviewed by Wednesday morning.
Per police policy, the name of the officer who killed the teenage girl will be released after 72 hours, and he will be on administrative leave for four days. The state Office of Special Prosecutions will investigate the shooting.
Police planned a second news conference Monday to discuss the incident in detail.
Alaska Public Media’s Ava White contributed information to this story.
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 at cklint@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Chris here.
Wesley Early covers Anchorage life and city politics for Alaska Public Media. Reach him at wearly@alaskapublic.org and follow him on X at @wesley_early. Read more about Wesley here.
