Anchorage name man shot by officer he reportedly ran at with knife

Update, 8:50 a.m. Wednesday:

Anchorage police have identified the man shot and killed Sunday by an officer in Mountain View, after police say he ran at the officer while holding a knife.

According to an updated statement, police have notified 24-year-old James V. Afuvai’s family of his death.

Original story:

An Anchorage police officer fatally shot a man Sunday night in Mountain View, after police say he ran at the officer while armed with a knife.

The man, who has not yet been named, is the fifth person shot and killed by Anchorage police this year.

According to a police statement, officers received a call at about 7:15 p.m. Monday reporting an emergency with someone hurt on the 500 block of North Park Street.

In a news conference at midnight Monday, Anchorage Police Chief Sean Case said the first officer to arrive at the scene was in his car awaiting backup from other officers and the department’s Mobile Intervention Team, which partners officers with mental health clinicians. A man holding a knife approached, and the officer stepped out to order that he drop the weapon.

“When the officer got out of his car he immediately started backpedaling in order to create distance, to create time where he could continue to provide commands and communicate,” Case said. “And the subject started running at the officer, and the officer began to increase his speed at which he was backpedaling.”

Police say the officer shot the man once in the upper body. Officers provided first aid, and medics took him to a hospital where he was declared dead.

Neither the officer nor any civilians were injured during the encounter, police said.

Police spokeswoman Renee Oistad said Monday morning that the man shot and killed was also the caller who had first requested a police response to North Park Street. He had called police dispatch multiple times. The responding officer did not initially know the man wielding the knife was the same man who had called 911, according to Oistad.

“At the time, officers did not know that the subject was the same individual as the person making the 911 calls, but eventually that was discovered,” Oistad said in an email. “Officers began to recognize, prior to their arrival, that this may be a mental health crisis call and made the decision to contact Mobile Intervention Team (MIT). They were waiting to make initial contact until proper resources were deployed.”

Oistad described the weapon the man approached the officer with as a knife with a roughly foot-long blade.

She declined to release further details about the nature of the man’s 911 calls and the officer’s response, citing the ongoing investigation. She also declined to discuss whether police policy calls for engaging armed subjects who approach police vehicles on foot.

“Every police call involving armed subjects is dynamic and different,” Oistad said. “The particular sequence of events in this incident is still under investigation.”

The officer will be publicly named in three days, under police policy. He has been placed on four days of administrative leave, and the state Office of Special Prosecutions will investigate the shooting for any violation of state law.

Both the officer’s body camera and his vehicle’s dashboard camera recorded the shooting. Police policy generally calls for footage of shootings and other major incidents to be released after 45 days.

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Case said the incident “highlights the type of challenging and dangerous types of calls officers respond to every day.”

“This puts officers in a challenging situation,” Case said. “I can’t highlight enough how important it is that people respond to commands officers give, so that these types of tragedies don’t occur.”

The man who died Sunday is the eighth person to be shot by police this year. Five of them have died, marking the highest annual death toll since at least 2000 as the Anchorage Daily News has reported an increase in shootings by police in recent years.

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