Anchorage police shot and injured a man Thursday afternoon on the city’s east side.
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Anchorage Police Chief Sean Case said at a press conference later in the day that the man, who has not been named publicly, fired a gun near a Wal-Mart on Debarr Road at about 1:12 p.m. Thursday.
“The male brandished a handgun while inside the store and then loaded the handgun inside the store,” Case said. “He then left the location, walked across the parking lot and fired one round in the air.”
Officers found the man about a mile and a half away, near the intersection of Debarr and Beaver Street, Case said. One officer fired at the man shortly after making contact with him, but Case said it’s unclear what the man was doing just before he was shot.
“At this time, the only thing that I can tell you is that the officers observed him sitting in a parking lot, and the subject stood up,” Case said. “After that, we’re gonna have to wait till the interviews to determine exactly what happened.”
The man was taken to a hospital, where he was listed as being in stable condition, Case said. No officers were injured.
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Case said the incident was captured on dash camera and body camera footage, but there was no audio recorded. Audio usually starts recording automatically when an officer turns on the body camera or their vehicle’s emergency lights, Case said.
Case said he didn’t want to speculate as to why no audio was recorded.
A witness to the shooting, who declined to give his name, showed Alaska Public Media security footage of the incident. The footage appears to show the man sitting in front of a light pole before standing up and walking away from a nearby police vehicle. The man then fell to the ground before officers walked near him. A time stamp on the footage shows the man falling forward, away from any officers shown in the video, about 10 minutes after officers were called.
As of late Thursday, no criminal charges had been filed against the man who was shot.
The shooting will be reviewed by the state Office of Special Prosecutions to determine if the officer’s use of lethal force was justified. The officer’s name will be released 72 hours after the shooting, a police spokeswoman said.
Thursday’s shooting marked the sixth reported police shooting in Anchorage in 2026.
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