Anchorage expects fatal police shooting as teenager's killing is fourth this year

The mayor of Anchorage, Alaska, promised reforms after a 16-year-old girl was shot and killed by police on Tuesday night. It was the sixth police-involved shooting in the city this year and the fourth fatality.

“We cannot and will not accept this as the new normal in Anchorage,” Mayor Suzanne LaFrance said in a statement. “We have lost a young person in our community who was supposed to start his first day of school today.”

LaFrance apologized directly to the teenager's family in a press conference on Wednesday.

“As a mother of a 16-year-old, I am deeply saddened that we have lost such a young life in our community,” LaFrance said. “To Easter Leafa's family, I am so incredibly sorry for your loss. This young woman deserved to be safe in our community and you deserved so much more time with her.”

According to a police statement, officers responded to a call that someone was threatening others with a knife in an apartment. When officers arrived and the girl did not drop the knife, two officers opened fire. The girl was then taken to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

But in an interview with KTUU, the family of 16-year-old Easter Leafa gave a more detailed and disturbing account of the incident.

Rosalie Tialavea, Leafa's eldest sister, described how police entered the apartment with guns drawn without asking questions about Leafa's age or who lived there, even though Leafa's mother was present and several minors, including toddlers, were in the house.

“They told us to go into the room and get out of their way,” Tialavea recalled. “I asked them if I could talk to my youngest because we all know what she is like and that she is not a sociable person. I asked them and they said no.”

Tialavea described Leafa as someone who “overthinks” and sometimes has emotional breakdowns. On the night of the incident, she was sitting on the balcony with a blanket over her head. The family believed they could dissuade her from holding the knife and tried to intervene, but police insisted on staying out of the way.

According to the family, Leafa's English skills were not very good and when police asked her to drop the knife she was holding, they said it didn't take much for officers to shoot.

“She made a movement, a tiny movement,” Tialavea said. “They shot her three times… They saw her go down on the second shot and they had to fire another one.”

Leafa's family said she and her mother recently moved to Anchorage from American Samoa to get a better education. Leafa was set to begin her penultimate year of high school at Bettye Davis East High School this week.

“She doesn't know much. She just moved here. It's very different from home,” Tialavea said. “The fact that they attacked her like that and shot her like that is very heartbreaking.”

Leafa's family remembered her as someone who “loved to sing” and cared for her nieces and nephews as if they were her own children.

“Of all the options you had, the only one you had was a gun?” asked Leafa’s other sister, Faialofa Dixon, directing her question to police.

“At this point, we want justice because this was not right,” Dixon continued. “They should have asked questions when they came in. Instead, they came in prepared and looked like they were ready to gun her down.”

“They took our girl's life,” Leafa's mother, also named Easter, said tearfully. She added that she felt sorry for her grandchildren, who also witnessed the shooting.

Hours before LaFrance's apology to the family, KTUU released raw body camera footage from the fatal police shooting of Kristopher Handy in May. Although police initially told reporters that Handy pointed a long gun at officers before they shot him, surveillance videos indicated that Handy did not raise his weapon. At least 10 shots can be heard in the videos before Handy collapsed and died at the scene.

Last month, KTUU reported that the state had ruled that the four Anchorage police officers who fired their weapons were “legally justified” in shooting and killing Handy.

On Wednesday, LaFrance and Anchorage Police Chief Sean Case announced a series of actions in response to Leafa's death and the five previous police-involved shootings. They include an independent investigation into Leafa's killing and the Anchorage Police Department's policies and practices, the formation of a community advisory council and departmental changes within the police department. A public report summarizing the findings of the past 15 years of police-involved shootings will also be released.