A 17-year-old driver faces DUI and manslaughter charges after police say he sped through a South Anchorage curve and crashed early Monday, killing one of his passengers.
Stefan Shearer is being charged as an adult, according to court records. He’s also accused of evidence tampering.
The victim, a male juvenile, has not been named. He was a student at Service High School, Anchorage School District spokesman Corey Allen Young said.
According to a charging document against Shearer, police dispatchers received an automated distress call from his Ford F-350 pickup truck at about 2:40 a.m. Monday. Responders found the truck on its roof in a treeline near the 6000 block of Bluebell Drive, off Golden View Drive near Potter Creek.
Shearer and one of his two passengers were standing nearby, the charges say.
Shearer’s attorney could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
According to the charges, police soon discovered that the other passenger was trapped beneath the pickup, which was lodged against a tree.
“The juvenile male gave police a ‘thumbs up’; he was declared deceased soon after being freed from the vehicle by the Anchorage Fire Department,” police said in the document.
The surviving passenger, another juvenile male, told police the three of them had been at a party where he said he was aware Shearer had been drinking, the charges say. He said he had been riding in the truck’s back seat, with the victim in the front passenger seat. He told police Shearer took the curve “way too fast” and the truck went off the road and rolled.
The passenger said he and Shearer didn’t see that the victim was trapped until they climbed out of the truck.
Police said Shearer threw a wallet containing two fake IDs into a brush line near the crash site. Officers recovered the wallet at the scene.
“Shearer initially told officers that he was watching his friends play video games at the (party), and then they left that residence ‘traveling the speed limit’ but he ‘made the turn too fast,’” police said.
According to the charges, officers saw Shearer “had blood-shot, watery eyes and spoke with thick, slurred speech.” When they took Shearer to the Anchorage Correctional Complex for DUI processing, a breath sample returned a result of .143, nearly twice Alaska’s legal limit of .08, the charges say.
Court records show Shearer still in custody Wednesday, after making an initial appearance in the case Tuesday.
Young said support staff are available at Service for students affected by Monday’s crash.
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.
