Anchorage police officers have shot two people in August, including one who was wounded and another who died.
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Sterling Lucas, 33, allegedly fired a gun near an East Anchorage Walmart on Aug. 13 before a responding officer shot and injured him about a mile and a half away. In a separate incident on Aug. 18, an officer shot and killed Lora Brady, 53, after she allegedly pointed what was later determined to be a BB gun at officers during a standoff at a housing facility downtown.
The shootings, just five days apart, were the 6th and 7th police shootings in Anchorage so far in 2026. In both cases, the shootings were not fully captured by officers’ body-worn cameras, Police Chief Sean Case said.
Case provided an update on both shootings Friday.
‘Six seconds’
In the Aug. 13 shooting, Anchorage police responded to a report that Lucas had brandished and loaded a gun inside the Walmart on Debarr Road, Case said.
“Following that, he exited the store, walked out to Debarr, to the roadway,” Case said. “Where he actually fired the round in the air was at the west end of the property.”
Anchorage police officer Michael Shamblin saw Lucas sitting down at the intersection of Debarr and Beaver Street, about a mile and a half away, Case said. Lucas stood up and began to walk away from Shamblin, and Shamblin got out of his vehicle, gave verbal commands to Lucas and then shot him four times, Case said.
“From the time he stepped out of his car to the time the first round was fired, was approximately six seconds,” Case said.
Shamblin pushed Lucas’s gun away and provided him with first aid before he was taken to a hospital, Case said.
There’s no indication that Lucas pointed his gun at Shamblin, and it was unclear if Lucas had pointed the gun at anyone else, Case said.
A police body camera captured video of the incident but no audio, Case said. The cameras Anchorage police use are always recording video, with a backup of up to 15 hours. However, due to issues around privacy, audio isn’t always being captured, Case said. He said the audio usually starts recording automatically when an officer turns on the body camera or their vehicle’s emergency lights.
“When we have contact with a member of the public under the color authority, our uniform patrol officers have to activate their body-worn cameras,” Case said.
Anchorage voters approved a tax levy in April 2021 to outfit Anchorage police officers with body-worn cameras. After establishing policies around their use, all of the city’s officers were said to have been using them by March 2024.
Since the incident wasn’t recorded on audio, the information provided to interviewers was solely from Shamblin’s recollection. Case declined to say what verbal commands Shamblin said he gave to Lucas, citing a standard, ongoing investigation by the state Office of Special Prosecutions.
Whether Shamblin tried to turn on his camera or not will likely be a part of the internal APD investigation of the shooting, Case said.
“That now becomes a critical thing that we’re going to kind of dive into and determine was there a justification for not doing it, if it wasn’t activated, whether it was attempted to be activated and work,” Case said. “I mean, there’s a whole host of things that we’ll get into to determine whether or not there’s a policy violation, but right now we can just say the criminal investigation reveals that there was no body-worn camera activation.”
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A police spokeswoman said Lucas was charged Aug. 19 with a misdemeanor count of misconduct with a weapon. As of Friday, the charges had not appeared in state court records.
‘Not a real gun’
On Aug. 18 at about 1:30 p.m., officers responded to a 911 call at the Adelaide, an apartment complex that houses formerly homeless people at 9th Avenue and Cordova Street. An employee at the building said a woman, later identified as Bradywas intoxicated and making suicidal statements while she had access to a gun, Case said Friday.
“While officers were en route to the call, we were updated with information that there were two staff members that had the gun pointed at them,” he said.
After officers arrived, they attempted to communicate with Brady, both through a megaphone and by calling her phone, Case said.
“We did attempt contact with the subject multiple times in this particular case, really didn’t get great communication,” he said. “We were unable to have dialogue back and forth. We could get a couple words back and forth, but that was it.”
Officers evacuated most residents of the Adelaide and closed off the parking lot, Case said. Members of the SWAT team, as well as crisis negotiators arrived. At the same time, officers used a drone to go into hallways inside the building to monitor the room Brady was in. Case said several officers were outside the room.
Officers were on scene for a little over an hour before Brady pointed a gun out of a third-story window, Case said. Officer Misha Carlson shot Brady from the ground level, striking her once in the upper body, and Brady was declared dead shortly after, Case said.
Police now know that the gun that Brady had was a BB gun modeled after a real handgun, Case said. He showed reporters a picture of the gun Friday.
Neither the officers at the scene nor the two people Brady allegedly pointed the BB gun at could tell it was not a real gun, Case said.
“Very difficult to determine what this looks like, and certainly represents a real, actual gun that a person could have and do harm,” he said.
Case said body camera and dash camera footage did not capture Brady pointing the gun out the window, and her actions were reported through interviews with officers.
“Because it’s an elevated location, the camera footage, they were audible and video running during the entire time of the incident, you’re not going to be able to see really what’s happening at the window at the time that the officer-involved shooting took place,” Case said.
Brady is the fourth person killed in a police shooting this year.
Both of the shootings Case discussed Friday are still under investigation by the state Office of Special Prosecutions to determine if either officer’s use of deadly force was legally justified. The Anchorage Police Department will also review each incident internally to see if the officers followed the department’s internal policies.
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