Anchorage police Monday asked for the public’s help as they search for a suspect they say shot two teenagers in the woods off the Chester Creek trail in the Sullivan Arena area on Sunday, leaving one dead and another severely injured following an “altercation” between a group of juveniles.
The juvenile suspect then fled on foot, authorities said.
Police updated other details about the incident Sunday evening, saying the person killed had recently turned 18 and was not a juvenile as police had originally stated. The other teen victim was transported to a hospital with life-threatening injuries, authorities said.
Police did not release the deceased victim’s name, saying they are working to first contact relatives.
MJ Thim, a spokesman with the Anchorage Police Department, said he did not have information about the suspect’s age.
“Detectives are aggressively working on identifying and locating the suspect,” police said in a statement.
The dispute began near the arena and ended in the woods off the Chester Creek Trail, police said.
“We have no indication of anything about them being homeless,” Thim said. “They were a group on the sportfields. We don’t know if it was the baseball or football fields or the basketball courts. They got into an altercation. What it was about is still being investigated.”
Thim said on Monday that police did not have the condition of the injured victim.
Police received a call at 6:25 p.m. on Sunday from someone who heard gunshots in the area. A short time later, someone else called to say they had been shot in the woods, police said in a Sunday evening alert.
Police concluded the two calls were linked, Thim said. Officers searched the area and found two juvenile males in the woods off the trail system. Both had been shot multiple times, he said.
He said police don’t believe there’s a public safety threat, and the city’s trails are “relatively safe.”
“This looks to be isolated to the group of juveniles who got into the altercation,” Thim said.