Two Anchorage police officers were legally justified in the fatal shooting of a man in February who police say had barricaded himself in a Midtown hotel and threatened a woman and her four children.
That’s according to a letter Thursday from the state Office of Special Prosecutions, which reviewed the shooting.
On Feb. 21, at around 3:50 a.m., Anchorage police were notified that a suspicious truck had parked at the Hampton Inn off West Tudor Road. Police later determined the vehicle had previously eluded an officer who was attempting a traffic stop.
Hotel staff told police the driver of the truck, later identified as 41-year-old Puipuia Alaelua, had gone to a hotel room.
Sam Vandergaw, an assistant Attorney General for Special Prosecutions, said officers determined that Alaelua had a gun and was in a room with a woman and four children. Alaelua threatened the woman and barricaded himself in the room, and officers began to assemble outside the room, Vandergaw said.
“That's when Alaelua shot through the door the first time,” Vandergaw said. “Then the officers attempted to break down the door and enter. And that's when Alaelua shot the second time. And everybody backed off and called SWAT.”
Officers attempted to negotiate with Alaelua for several hours before SWAT arrived, Vandergaw said. Police body camera footage of the incident shows a tense situation that peaked at around 9 a.m., he said.
“You can really hear the escalation of what's going on in the room,” Vandergaw said. “They're screaming and yelling. This sounds very desperate. And at that point they had been able to get a camera through the wall so they could tell that Alaelua was fighting with the woman inside the hotel room at that point. And that's when the decision was made to go in.”
Officers breached the door with explosive charges. They saw Alaelua on the ground, holding the woman hostage on top of himself, with a gun pointed at her side, Vandergraw said. Officers told Alaelua to drop the gun multiple times, and he did not.
Two officers, Jordan Varak and Thomas Franjul, shot Alaelua, and he died at the scene.
In his letter, Vandergaw said he determined that the shooting was legally justified.
“Mr. Alaelua was a clear danger to the woman, to, potentially, the children in there, and to the officers,” he said.
Anchorage police released the body camera footage of the shooting on Friday, a day after the state published the Office of Special Prosecutions letter. Per the department’s body camera policy, it has a 45-day timeline to publicly release footage after any police shooting or similar “critical incident.”
But for Alelua’s shooting and the Feb. 4 shooting of 33-year-old Francis Rochon, the release of body camera video happened after that 45-day mark.
The release was delayed in both cases at the request of the Office of Special Prosecutions, Anchorage Police Department spokesman Chris Barraza said.
"The video was ready to go at the 45-day mark,” Barraza said. “This specifically was the Office of Special Prosecutions. They were still reviewing and investigating the case. So they sent us a letter, on both of these cases, asking if we could postpone the release until their investigations were done.”
This is the second time in the past year that Officer Varak has shot somebody while on duty. He was one of two officers who shot 22-year-old Kaleb Bourdukofsky last June after Bourdukofsky allegedly shot and killed another man near a downtown bar. Bourdukofsky was later charged with murder.
In total, Anchorage police have shot 12 people in the past year, killing seven of them. All 12 shootings were deemed justified by state prosecutors.
