An Anchorage officer killed a woman downtown, by the department's account

An Anchorage police officer shot and killed a woman at a downtown apartment building last month, and the department says its own crisis teams could not prevent it.

The account of the Aug. 18 shooting comes almost entirely from Police Chief Sean Case, who briefed reporters. The department has not yet interviewed the officer who fired, and no account from the woman's family or the building has been made public. What follows is the department's version.

Case said the call came in that afternoon from the Adelaide, an apartment building at 9th and Cordova, reporting an intoxicated woman threatening to kill herself with a gun. Officers were told on the way that she had pointed the gun at two staff members. They arrived within minutes and told her over loudspeakers she was under arrest.

Negotiators reached her only in brief, fragmentary exchanges by loudspeaker and phone, Case said, none of it meaningful. Police evacuated most of the building, brought in drones, an armored vehicle and less-lethal weapons, and warned the school across the street to keep students inside.

About 20 minutes in, the woman appeared at a third-story window. She was "pointing the gun in the direction of officers as well as the school," Case said, and one officer, firing from ground level, killed her with a single shot. No less-lethal weapons were used.

"We had the right personnel, we had the right equipment, we had containment, we had communication, evacuation," Case said. "Sometimes you just can't control everything."

The department called it the seventh officer-involved shooting in Anchorage this year and put the officer on leave. The account is preliminary, Case said, drawn from body and dash cameras and dispatch records.

The killing lands amid growing scrutiny of how Alaska police use deadly force. The state has completed at least 22 reviews of police shootings since 2024 without charging an officer, most recently clearing three Anchorage officers on Sept. 9 in the May death of Emil McCord. And a use-of-force review the city commissioned last year, which examined 11 Anchorage shootings, flagged the department's handling of behavioral health crises as an area needing improvement. APD says it has adopted 49 of the review's more than 50 recommendations.