‘This is Anchorage’: Park Strip vigil honors 16-year-old killed by police

Roughly 100 people gathered at the Delaney Park Strip on Friday to show support for the family and honor the life of 16-year-old Easter Leafa, who was fatally shot by police Tuesday.

Family members this week said Leafa arrived in Alaska from American Samoa earlier this year and turned 16 in June. She was about to start her junior year of high school at Bettye Davis East Anchorage High School.

Leafa is the sixth person to be shot by police in the last three months. Police said an officer responding to a reported domestic disturbance fatally shot her inside an apartment while she was holding a knife. Her death has sparked anguish in the community and increased scrutiny of the police department.

[Related coverage: Anchorage mayor, police chief announce reforms amid mounting scrutiny, anguish over girl’s shooting death by police]

On Friday afternoon, a crowd gathered under an overcast sky and bowed their heads in prayer, held hands and sang while holding flameless candles.

Three pastors spoke and offered prayers. Lusiana Tuga Hansen, CEO of the Polynesian Association of Alaska, and Antonia Commack, an advocate for missing and murdered Indigenous people, also spoke. There was a moment of silence near the end of the vigil.

“We are not here to indict the administration or the police department or anything like this,” Adrienne Richardson, a pastor at First Tabernacle Beth El, told the crowd. “We’re here as a unified body of different ministers and clergy to pray. Pray for our city, pray for our children as they go back to school, pray for the families that are affected by these incidents. This is Anchorage — this is not Chicago, this is not New York, this is not Detroit. This is Anchorage. I don’t know why some of you are here, but I remain here because I believe that Anchorage is a safe place for people of all colors and denominations and cultures to live.”

Leafa’s family has said she moved to Anchorage earlier this year with hopes of a better education.

“Easter, not even here that long, trying to make something for herself, trying to make something for herself, trying to go to school, trying to be a better teen, but her life is taken away so quickly,” Hansen said during the vigil.

Samantha Poe said she attended the event to show support for the Leafa family as well as the broader Anchorage community.

”I felt that what was done could have been handled a different way. I wanted to be here for more support and to help our community to be able to rise up as one and help change the system,” she said.

Several events are planned this weekend in response to Leafa’s death. The Party for Socialism and Liberation Anchorage is holding a protest at City Hall on Friday at 6 p.m. The Alaska Samoan Tribal Council is hosting a march Saturday at 11 a.m. beginning outside police headquarters downtown and ending at Town Square Park.