An Anchorage police officer will not face criminal charges in the fatal shooting of a woman in June.
Prosecutors with the state Office of Special Prosecutions determined that Sgt. John Butler was legally justified in shooting and killing 58-year-old Lisa Fordyce-Blair after a lengthy SWAT standoff at her home, according to an 18-page letter released Tuesday.
Fordyce-Blair is among four people killed by Anchorage police this year. The state has so far investigated three of the shootings and cleared all of the officers.
The state’s letter says at around 4:40 p.m. on June 19, officers were called to Fordyce-Blair’s home in Muldoon after a neighbor reported that she had yelled “racial epithets” at him and his son and threatened them with a rifle when they were mowing her lawn. The man told officers that he and his son had mowed her lawn for five years, and “this was not normal behavior from Ms. Fordyce-Blair,” according to the letter.
Officers arrived on scene shortly after, and for more than four hours, officers made announcements over a PA system to try to deescalate the situation, the letter says. At the same time, an APD negotiator attempted to contact Fordyce-Blair by phone, leaving several voice messages and sending multiple text messages to try to get her to surrender voluntarily.
The letter says that a SWAT team was called when Fordyce-Blair did not respond to the negotiator and the PA announcements. They began to fire “knock knock” rounds, described as non-lethal foam rounds designed to get somebody to exit a building, at the side of Fordyce-Blair’s home and used them to break her window to allow a drone to fly in and provide a video feed to the officers. The negotiator successfully contacted Fordyce-Blair on the phone after the rounds were fired, and spoke with her for roughly 45 minutes, according to the letter.
Fordyce-Blair fired two to three rounds at the drone, causing it to fall, though it continued to provide a video feed, the letter says. Officers also began deploying chemical agents into the house in order to drive her out of the house. The letter says that officers reported hearing shots being fired from inside the home.
Jenna Gruenstein, Chief Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Special Prosecutions, was the main investigator for the Fordyce-Blair shooting. She said that at around 9:40 p.m., Fordyce-Blair opened her garage door. Gruenstein said that Fordyce-Blair did not comply with orders from officers to drop her weapon, and she was reported to have been “scoping out” officers.
“Sgt. Butler described the situation and his concern about the other officers,” Gruenstein said. “He then also described that she, Ms. Fordyce-Blair, saw him and turned and pointed the gun at him, and he described firing to protect himself, as well as other officers who were nearby.”
Fordyce-Blair died at the scene.
Gruenstein said there were likely several justifications for the use of force by Butler, including that Fordyce-Blair had a warrant for a felony assault and that there were concerns over her behavior due to her threatening her neighbor and firing shots in her home.
“So there were some other justifications, but in this case, it really came down to the self defense claim that any citizen would have been entitled to use,” Gruenstein said. “That is when, you know, Sergeant Butler reported, and it was confirmed by at least one other officer, that Ms. Fordyce-Blair had a gun that was pointed at Sergeant Butler.”
State prosecutors also deemed that officers were justified in the fatal shootings of Kristopher Handy in May and Tyler May in early June.
According to state records, which date back to 2010, prosecutors have investigated roughly 150 police shootings in Alaska and none of them have led to an officer being charged with a crime.
Gruenstein said she understands the public’s desire for timely investigations of police shootings, but she says her department is focused on doing thorough evaluations of the incidents.
“These cases tend to have a large amount of information that the reviewing prosecutor needs to look at and go through everything, and so this isn’t something that we ever want to rush,” Gruenstein said. “We want to make sure that we’re giving these a very thorough and analytic review.”
The shooting was not captured on body cameras because the SWAT officers were not wearing them. Then-Anchorage Police Chief Bianca Cross said shortly after the shooting that SWAT team members were unable to get the cameras to fit on their gear. Police Chief Sean Case, appointed by Mayor Suzanne LaFrance in July, said that SWAT team members would be equipped with body cameras moving forward.
Anchorage police are still investigating the fatal Aug. 13 police shooting of 16-year-old Easter Leafa. Once that investigation wraps up, the shooting will be investigated by the state Office of Special Prosecutions, and then by a third-party at the order of the mayor.
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.
