Police are reviewing ‘hundreds’ of videos of fatal downtown shooting, chief says

A 25-year-old man was killed in a chaotic downtown Anchorage shooting early Saturday that was captured on a constellation of surveillance and cellphone videos in the heart of downtown Anchorage, police said Monday.

At a news conference Monday morning, Anchorage Police Department Chief Bianca Cross said detectives are reviewing “hundreds” of videos related to the incident that left a man, identified as Diego Joe, dead, another man injured and the man believed to be the gunman shot and wounded by police.

Kaleb Eugene Bourdukofsky is charged with shooting Joe and an unidentified man who survived and was hospitalized, according to police. The shootings followed a fight outside a bar nearby, charges say.

Bourdukofsky, 22, has been charged with murder, weapons misconduct and assault. Police shot him as he tried to flee, according to a criminal complaint filed in Anchorage Superior Court. As of Monday, he was in stable condition and in Alaska Department of Corrections custody, Cross said.

As of Monday afternoon, Bourdukosky was still hospitalized, based on state Department of Corrections records. He had not yet had an initial court appearance.

The shootings happened around 2:30 a.m. in an area less than a block from police headquarters. According to the criminal complaint, officers responding to shots fired “saw a male with a gun running through a parking lot” off Third Avenue between G and H streets. Two officers fired, hitting him in the upper and lower body, according to an initial police account.

Officers didn’t try to use less-lethal techniques to stop Bourdukofsky because of the danger to the public, Cross said. “Multiple” bystanders were in the area at the time of the shooting, she said.

“This man was running with a gun in his hand after an active shooting,” she said.

Bourdukofsky was shot near the corner of G Street and Third Avenue, police said earlier.

Police then found Joe dead from multiple gunshot wounds in an alcove behind the Pioneer Bar, according to the criminal complaint in the case. Another man was shot in the leg while standing behind the bar and was taken to a hospital, the charges say.

Witnesses told police Joe and Bourdukofsky had been fighting moments before the shooting. It’s not yet clear how the two encountered each other that night.

“The nature of the argument, and whether Diego Joe and Kaleb Bourdukofsky were known to one another ahead of time, are still under investigation,” police said in a written statement Monday.

Under the police department’s policy, the officers involved in the shooting have been placed on administrative leave. The state’s Office of Special Prosecutions will investigate.

It was the second police shooting in a month in Anchorage.

On May 13, Anchorage police officers shot and killed a man outside a West Anchorage apartment building after he “raised” a gun toward them, they said. That shooting is under investigation and has been the source of controversy since a video emerged that raised questions about whether the man was raising the weapon when he was shot. Police have declined to release body camera video from officers while the investigation is ongoing.