16-year-old girl dead following officer-involved shooting

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - A 16-year-old girl is dead following an officer-involved shooting Tuesday night in the University Area neighborhood, according to the Anchorage Police Department.

According to APD, the shooting happened around 11:30 p.m. Tuesday when police were called to an apartment complex. The caller said her sister was threatening her and had a knife.

The family later identified the deceased as Easter Leafa.

After arriving at the Greenbriar Apartments off Tudor Road, the officers directed commands toward Leafa, who approached officers while holding the knife, according to APD.

Anchorage School District officials released a statement Tuesday morning by Superintendent Jharrett Bryantt confirming that a high school student in the district was the one shot and killed by police.

“Our deepest condolences are with the families involved in this tragic situation,” Bryantt wrote in the letter. “We have activated our Mental Health Student and Staff Support Team for those impacted by this situation. The team will support impacted staff and students as we prepare to start school tomorrow.”

In a press conference on Wednesday morning, Anchorage Police Chief Sean Case said around this point, one officer fired multiple times at Leafa. Another officer fired a “less lethal projectile.”

Medics took the teen to the hospital, where she was declared dead.

Case described the shooting as “tragic,” saying the shooting victim — Leafa — was about to start her junior year of high school.

“As police officers, we strive to protect human life and when we don’t meet that goal, there’s no other way to describe it than it’s tragic,” he said.

Body-worn cameras were used, he said. Case acknowledged Tuesday’s shooting was Anchorage’s sixth officer-involved shooting in the last three months.

“We are committed to continue to look at our training, our tactics as well as our supervision in these type of incidents to try to prevent future officer-involved shootings,” Case said.

Anchorage Mayor Suzanne LaFrance said her “heart goes out” to the Leafa family, while also stressing the need for police transparency and accountability.

“The loss of a child is devastating and 16 is too young to leave this world. Last night we lost a member of our community, and we grieve together with the family,” LaFrance’s statement read. “We all have a right–and a need—to understand what happened last night. Everyone deserves to feel safe in our community and transparency and trust in law enforcement are paramount to that.”

Upon hearing news of the deadly shooting, Anchorage Assembly member Zac Johnson — who has previous experience as a state trooper — said incidents like Tuesday night’s shooting should serve as another call for police transparency with the broader community while adding that he has felt the new police chief has worked to bridge the divide.

“We certainly need to be aware and mindful of when these tragic events happen, but realize that you know, there were probably 500 other calls APD responded to that day where they went out and helped people, where they may have saved lives, and that’s really, you know, if we think about what the agency means, that’s still and always will be a big part of it that we shouldn’t lose track of,” Johnson said.

Johnson also said he believes in the process of bringing all the facts to the table — including body cam videos — in order to come to a conclusion on how to act on police shootings in the community.

“My role after that is again to move into that fact-finding exercise, and some of that takes time,” he said. “Most of the information we get, we get it when it becomes publicly available. Everything we do is in front of the public, right?

“As difficult as it is, there’s a certain amount of time it takes to gather the facts to inform our decisions. But then ... once we have that information, then it’s our job to work with law enforcement again to make sure that they have the funding and the resources they need, hopefully, they have the personnel they need, and to the extent that we can influence that through policy or budget — that’s where we’re a part of it.”

A follow-up press conference is scheduled for 1 p.m. Monday.

This is a developing story, check back for updates.

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