Crime & Courts

Anchorage police: Stolen car found shot up and ablaze in school parking lot

A stolen car was found in flames and full of bullet holes outside Tyson Elementary School in Mountain View on Sunday afternoon, according to Anchorage police.

Police said 911 calls reporting gunshots came in around 3 p.m. Sunday.

In the school parking lot, officers found a sedan on fire, according to a police dispatch.

Anchorage Fire Chief Denis LeBlanc said firefighters responded at 3:07 p.m., but police officers told them to wait nearby.

"APD believed the scene could still be hostile," LeBlanc said. "What they do is they tell AFD to stage, so we'll sit about a block away from the scene until they clear it and essentially tell us it's safe to enter, and that didn't happen until 3:15 p.m."

Firefighters then extinguished the flames within 10 minutes, he said.

Police said the inside of the car was destroyed. Bullet holes scarred its outside and shell casings were found nearby. The car, a gray 2010 Chevrolet Malibu, had been reported stolen, according to police.

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Police said Monday that no one was injured in the fire and no arrests had been made.

They said there was no information linking the incident to the shots fired in two East Anchorage parking lots last week.

Last Tuesday, a barrage of shots was fired from two vehicles outside an apartment complex in the 7800 block of Creekside Center Drive in Muldoon. The next day, gunfire outside another apartment building less than 2 miles away left bullet holes in cars and walls.

Police ask anyone with information on the Mountain View car fire to call dispatch at 907-786-8900 (press "0" to reach an operator) or Crime Stoppers at 907-561-STOP.

Tegan Hanlon

Tegan Hanlon was a reporter for the Anchorage Daily News between 2013 and 2019. She now reports for Alaska Public Media.

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