Anchorage police say a man forcibly held a woman on top of him while lying on the ground and threatening her with a gun before he was fatally shot by officers last Friday morning.
Officers shot the man after a roughly five-hour standoff at the Hampton Inn in Midtown. At a press conference Thursday, Police Chief Sean Case provided additional details on the shooting, describing it as a hostage situation.
He said officers were called to the hotel at around 3:45 a.m. after being told there was a suspicious vehicle in the parking lot.
“The vehicle was involved in eluding earlier in the night from the Anchorage Police Department,” Case said.
Case said a man in the vehicle went to a hotel room where he met another man, a woman and several children. He said officers communicated with the man and woman through a partially opened door, and determined the suspect was holding the others hostage. The suspect then pointed a handgun at officers and slammed the door closed. The man in the room with the suspect eventually was released as officers kept in contact with the woman, Case said.
“While they are standing outside of the room, they hear a shot being fired from inside the room,” Case said. “Those officers then attempt to make entry inside of the room. While they’re trying to make entry into the room, two shots are fired through the door at the same time. At that point in time, they back away from the door, since they weren't able to gain entry.”
Case said a SWAT team arrived and crisis negotiators tried to get the suspect to cooperate for about five hours until, he said, officers were alerted to the suspect assaulting the woman. With the use of an explosive, Case said, they breached the door and saw the suspect lying on the ground between two beds with the woman on top of him. He was aiming his gun at her, Case said.
“When the officers see the gun, they yell to drop the gun twice and, ‘Don't do it,’” Case said. “One officer steps up on that first bed and fires one round he has. He fired one round with a handgun. The second officer fires one round from a rifle.”
The man was pronounced dead at the scene at around 9 a.m.. Police have not yet released his name.
Case declined to elaborate on the relationship between the man and the people in the hotel room with him. He said no one else in the room was seriously injured.
This is the fourth police shooting in Anchorage this year, and one of a dozen in the past 12 months. Seven of the people died. State prosecutors deemed all of the shootings as legally justified.
APD identified the two officers who shot the man Friday as Tomas Franjul and Jordan Varak. Varak is one of three officers in the last year to shoot two people in separate instances in the line of duty. He also fatally shot a downtown murder suspect in June.
The other two officers who have shot more than one person in the line of duty in the last year are Jacob Jones and Isaac Kimball. Jones was one of several officers who fatally shot a man outside a Sand Lake home in May, and he was one of two officers who shot and injured a man who aimed a shotgun at patrons of an East Anchorage gas station. Kimball fatally shot a man in early February who was allegedly pointing a gun at passing vehicles on Tudor Road, and he was one of several officers who shot and killed a man who pointed a gun at them near an Anchorage senior center in June.
Case said he worries about both the mental health of officers who fire their weapon multiple times as well as the public perception of an officer shooting multiple people.
“You consider the facts and circumstances of each case, the facts, you know, speak for themselves and are relatively clear,” Case said. “So although I can understand the optics, you know, the facts say that we have reasons to be there.”
