Anchorage officer shoots suspect following report of armed robbery in Midtown

Anchorage police said an officer shot and seriously wounded a man in Midtown while responding to an armed robbery in progress on Tuesday afternoon.

Police said the shooting occurred just before 2 p.m. in the 500 block of Northern Lights Boulevard but did not identify the business targeted in the robbery.

A victim who had been bound fled the business into a nearby business with tape around her wrists and her mouth, police Chief Sean Case said during a media briefing Tuesday. Someone at the other business called police.

Officers en route were “advised that the suspect was armed with a handgun” and trying to get into an ATM at the business, Case said. An officer arriving at the scene saw someone who matched the suspect description but the man didn’t respond to commands and then fled on foot, he said.

“The officer eventually fired between five and eight rounds, striking the suspect two times in the upper body,” Case said.

The wounded man was brought to the hospital with injuries police described as life-threatening. No additional information about his status was provided during the briefing.

Case described the information provided during the briefing as preliminary as the investigation continued. Police plan to release more information, including the names of any officers involved as well as the suspect, at another briefing in a few days, he said.

What the officer saw before firing at the suspect is “unknown at this point” because the officer hadn’t been interviewed by the time of Tuesday’s briefing, Case said. The incident was captured by body-worn camera but the view was obstructed so the footage won’t be as clear “as we typically would like to see,” he said.

Tuesday’s police shooting is the first this year. Anchorage police shot eight people last year. Five of them died.