Homeless man killed by officers during confrontation in downtown Juneau

A 35-year-old Juneau man was shot and killed after a confrontation with police and Alaska State Troopers on a busy downtown street Monday afternoon.

Officers with the Juneau Police Department were following up on a report of an assault involving Steven Kissack when he “produced a knife and refused to follow orders,” the troopers wrote in a statement online Monday night.

An Alaska wildlife trooper and additional Juneau police officers showed up on Front Street around 1 p.m., shooting bean bag rounds at Kissack as they negotiated with him to drop the knife, the dispatch said.

Kissack “charged officers while brandishing the knife,” according to the initial version of events by troopers. He was shot by “multiple law enforcement officers” and declared dead at a Juneau hospital.

The Juneau Empire reported that Kissack was homeless and well known in the capital city for his dog. The dog was in the area at the time Kissack was killed, was uninjured and is “being cared for,” according to Department of Public Safety spokesman Austin McDaniel.

The Alaska Department of Public Safety did not immediately answer a question about the kind of knife police say Kissack wielded, saying it was part of an open investigation into the shooting. The Alaska Department of Investigation will review the case, according to the agency.

The fatal shooting was the second involving state troopers in a week. Troopers shot and killed a 67-year-old man “brandishing a harpoon” on a crowded Kasilof beach July 8.

Anchorage Police Department officers have shot five people, three fatally, since May.