Anchorage Police: OIS Press Conference September 14 2026

Good morning. I want to start with who was involved in the incident, kind of lay a little structure. This is an incident that's lasted over 22 hours that started around noon yesterday afternoon. And so kind of put a little structure on the people that were involved. So as I refer to them throughout the press conference, that you'll kind of try to follow me and hopefully reduce some of the questions.

I will refer to a victim in this case. The victim in this case is what started this incident, and that's an elderly gentleman that had his, uh, newer truck stolen at gunpoint earlier in the day yesterday afternoon. I would refer to a suspect in this case. The suspect is an adult male that was involved in the officer-involved shooting yesterday evening just prior to 8 o'clock, and that subject at this time is also believed to be the individual that was involved in stealing the truck earlier in the day. Those details are still being pulled together, and, and as I walk through it, you'll understand the complexity of the case as to why I say he's believed to be— we'll have another press conference in a week, next Monday, and at that time you'll certainly have a lot more information that will pull this case together.

So as I mentioned, this started about noon yesterday afternoon. An elderly gentleman had his a new truck that he parked at the T-intersection of 22nd and Glacier. While he parked there, he observed a Subaru with at least one individual inside the Subaru, and one male that approached him had a short conversation before pulling out a handgun and asking the victim for his keys to his car. The victim did not immediately turn over the keys to his car, at which time the suspect fired a single round and then used the firearm to strike the victim multiple times in the head and face, rendering him unconscious and, um, inflicting significant injury to the victim. The victim came to as the suspect was taking items out of his pockets.

He observed the suspect get into his truck and drive away in the Subaru follow the truck away from the scene.

Throughout the course of the day, we were able to locate the stolen vehicle, and we were also able to locate the residence where the suspect, uh, fled to. So at that time, we had 3 different locations that we were dealing with: the location of the initial incident on Glacier, the location where we found the vehicle, and the location where the suspect was. We had about 6-hour time frame that now took place once we located the residence at that particular time. We're using detectives, use of technology, patrol officers, as well as crisis negotiators to try to communicate with the folks inside the residence, as well as pull the case together, get search warrants so that we can serve those search warrants and try to get into the into the location and arrest the subject, or the suspect. After about approximately 6 hours being on scene, just before 8 o'clock, a male suspect, the person we believed to be the suspect, exited the front door of the residence.

He stood outside the front door for a couple of seconds, kind of surveyed what was happening out in front of him, went back inside the residence. A couple of minutes later, He walked back outside the front of the residence. As he appeared in front of the residence, we had one officer that was giving very clear commands to the suspect, telling the suspect exactly what to do. Stop walking, put his hands up over his head, interlace his fingers. And then you hear the officer advise the suspect to stop reaching.

The suspect produced a handgun, pointed it in the direction of the officers. 4 Of our officers fired multiple rounds, striking the suspect. We then utilized a patrol vehicle as cover to move up to extract the suspect from the scene and take him to a safer location so AFD paramedics could transport him to a hospital. There were numerous people inside the residence at this time, which is what made it a little more difficult to extract the suspect from the front yard. We then called SWAT to come out and clear the residence while crisis negotiators continued to communicate with the people inside the residence and get compliance for those people to get them out of the residence.

SWAT was on scene until about 5:30 this morning clearing that residence, and currently, as we are right now, the crime scene team is still on scene processing the scene. As I mentioned earlier, we're crossing over hour number 22 involved in this case. During this case, we had all three of our patrol shifts that have been involved. It started with day shift yesterday, and day shift that's on today is working it as well today. We had our crime scene team, our detectives, SWAT officers, and then many of our professional staff have been involved.

In the last 22 hours working this, this particular case. Uh, the incident is caught on body-worn camera. It's also on dash camera footage. As a reminder, we have somebody in custody that we're going to be charging with a crime, as in this situation. The video release is going to be delayed as it's connected to the criminal prosecution of this individual.

We'll have more details in the second press conference on exactly what the suspect is going to be charged with. For both the incident where the officer-involved shooting took place, as well as the incident involving the elderly male and the vehicle.

You know, things that we've been talking about a lot recently is not only officer-involved shootings, use of technology, as well as violent crime. And this is a case where all three of those elements were at place. We started with violent crime, and we used technology to locate the vehicle as well as locate the residence where the suspects were located. And then we had an officer-involved shooting that took place after the suspect pointed a gun at officers. And, you know, there's, there's a lot of incidents or a lot of details in this, in this case that I would love to go over now.

But as this case continues to unfold and as we process this case, as well as the fact that we've got one individual that's going to be charged probably with multiple crimes. Unfortunately, I can't get into all the details of the case. Certainly next week I want to provide more details that I can, but this individual in this particular case was a violent crime, and it occurred in a manner that the officer spent a lot of real dedicated time and resources to ensure that we took this individual into custody. I want to thank the officers for their commitment to the community. You know, right now, I think a lot of officers have felt like there's a lot of criticism on the work that they're doing, and sometimes that causes officers to be a little more hesitant to go out there and do proactive police work.

And so I do appreciate the fact that they're staying plugged in to protect this community each and every day.

They're out there doing the right things, not only for the community but for victims of crimes like this. The last thing I want to say, and I want to be a little careful as how I say that because it's real important to me, we've had several officer-involved shootings this year. All of them have involved some form of gun in some way, whether it was fired prior to officers getting on scene, whether officers were fired upon or saw the weapon being fired, or whether the firearms are are being pointed at officers when they arrive on scene. And it's really important to understand that when someone points a gun at an officer, it significantly limits the responses that are available to the officers. In this case is one of those situations.

With that, I'll take questions. Yes, Wesley. Yes, Wesley Early, Alaska Public Media. Can you say what the status status of the elderly gentleman is and what the current, I guess, status of the suspect in this case? So the, the victim was taken to the hospital and treated for his injuries, and the suspect also transported to the hospital, treated his injuries.

Both are going to survive, as what we know right now.

Yes, ma'am. Yeah, I'm kind of curious, you know, we had the very recent report report about APD's use of force and officer-involved shootings. Were there any recommendations in that report that you've either implemented or not implemented yet that would be pertinent to this situation at all? I don't think that would be pertinent to this information or to this situation here. You know, we had our, our crisis negotiators on scene communicating for hours with the occupants inside the residence.

You know, it's important because it's a residential area that our officers had a relatively close perimeter on the residence. It's not something they can be blocks away because of the crime that had been committed, people being inside. We, we strongly believe that there are weapons inside based on all the information that we had. So we had to put our officers in a position where they were closer to the residence than in an ideal world we want them to be, but that's, that's where they had to be to protect the public around them. After the suspect stepped out and went back into his residence, you can hear the conversation going back and forth with officers talking about if there's better tactical positions they can be in.

We had less lethal tools that were on scene. We had 40mm. We had pepper ball launchers that were on scene. You can also hear officers talk about And really, I'll use the word stress because that's the best word I can come up with right now, of having somebody come out and survey what's happening with a bunch of officers on a perimeter and then go back inside feeling pretty comfortable that that's the suspect that we're talking about, knowing that that suspect committed a crime with a gun earlier in the day, knowing that that suspect fired a gun earlier in the day, and just planning what's going to happen if he he comes out and— or more than one person comes out firing rounds. So the officers were going through that process.

And you can hear they're in a position that's not the greatest position, but the best position for them to be in to keep the neighborhood safe. And I think it's incidents like this where we have to understand that we can't render the entire scene safe. Somebody has to be in. Close to the residence in case somebody comes out and is going to fire off rounds and protect the neighborhood. So going back to your original question, I don't think there were any recommendations that were in there that would have impacted this scene.

You mentioned that pointing a firearm at a police officer limits the options that they have. Can you describe through what the protocols are that are limited under that action? Yeah, I think, I think, you know, very simply, if somebody points a gun at you, you're— there's a risk of being killed. And so once the gun gets pointed at the officer, you know, an officer is not going to select a less lethal option in that particular situation. You know, those decisions to fire a gun generally is made before the gun gets pointed at an officer.

So by the time that gun is pointed at an officer, they are They're very limited in what they can respond, and really lethal response to someone pointing a gun at you is pretty much the only option that they have left, particularly given distances, given cover, given concealment. The surrounding areas definitely can dictate if there's another split second that an officer can wait, but we are talking about split seconds here when a gun is presented and pointing at an officer. Yes, sir. There was sort of relocation as to where the truck was taken, where the truck was found, and the residence and stuff. Can you describe how far where the truck was found from where the residence was?

Uh, all of them are East Anchorage. Um, you know, I can say really at this time is it was relative close proximity. I mean, it wasn't across town. I had two questions. One is, do you think that the victim and the suspect knew each other?

Did they have any type of relationship? Relationship, or was this random? There's no indication they knew each other. And then the house, you said it took hours to kind of clear that house out. How many people were there?

Can you give us a sense of like what the situation with the house and the people that were in there is? Yeah, there's close to double digits people inside of the residence. Um, you know, I'll give you a little bit more information the second press conference of, you know, people coming in and out the front door while officers were there and able to see the scene. Just kind of that will help put in perspective as to why we had SWAT come out. I mean, obviously an officer-involved shooting, you know, the violent crime raises to the level to have, you know, SWAT come out.

But then you start talking about clearing the residence, we want to make sure that we're going to take as much time as possible to safely clear that residence so that there's no more, you know, lethal encounters. You mentioned that there was about a 6-hour standoff. Is that 6 hours from 8 PM when officers arrived at the residence. And so would that place the shooting at about 2 in the morning? Shooting took place at 6 or 8 PM, just prior to 8 PM.

And so we arrived at the residence and started securing that residence about 6 hours prior to that. And we'll do one more question here. Leslie, did you have a question?

I have just the same exact question about the timeline. So you were at the residence and it took— were you asking people to come out during that initial 6 hours? Yes, we had, we had a full complement of, of officers, uh, crime scene negotiators, patrol officers that were on scene during that period of time, uh, finding out, you know, phone numbers for the residents, how to get good communication to the residents, establishing some communication within the residents. And trying to get the folks inside to come out. So then the shooting at 8, and then you were on scene for hours later up until this morning still trying to get all the folks out of there?

SWAT cleared about 5:30 this morning, and that's when the residence was completely cleared. There were no more occupants left in the residence. And then currently crime scene team is still on scene processing the scene. If I could just get one more. You mentioned that sort of, so it would have been about 2 hours before —when the truck was stolen and when it was found.

You mentioned there was sort of use of technology. Officers— can you talk a little bit about what sort of technology were used to track the truck down? I will definitely provide an update on that next Monday when I, when I kind of get into more of the details. Remember, at this point in time, the officers have not provided their statements, so some of the technology that was used as well as some of the details of what happened when the suspect came out of the residence just before the shooting will also be provided next week, but I want to make sure the officers get clean statements out before I give too many details about those things. Thank you.