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.
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 this officer got out of his car he immediately started backpedaling in order to create distance, to create time when he did, and continued 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.
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 dash 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 officer was 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 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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Chris Klint is a web producer and breaking news reporter at Alaska Public Media. Reach him atcklint@alaskapublic.org.Read more about Chrishere.
