An Anchorage police officer responding to a shots-fired call struck a taxi with their patrol vehicle, killing a driver and passenger in Midtown early Saturday morning, officials said.
The officer and three other passengers in the cab were hospitalized, Anchorage Police Department Chief Sean Case said during a media briefing Saturday morning.
The officer was driving west on 36th Avenue at about 1:10 a.m. with the vehicle’s emergency lights activated when they collided with the cab at the A Street intersection, Case said. The taxi was traveling north on A Street, he said.
The two vehicles “met relatively in the middle of the intersection,” came to rest at the northwest corner of the intersection and caught on fire upon colliding with each other, he said.
The Anchorage Fire Department also responded to the scene, according to an alert on the PulsePoint app.
It was unclear whether the officer had activated his vehicle’s siren, Case said.
The cab’s driver and front-seat passenger were declared dead at the scene, he said.
Three passengers in the taxi’s back seat, Case said, were taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. The officer was also hospitalized with non-life-threatening but serious injuries, he said.
All remained hospitalized as of Saturday morning, he said.
The officer, who Case didn’t name Saturday morning, will be out of work for a significant amount of time due to their injuries, he said. The officer’s name will be released later, according to Case.
The names of the deceased passengers will be released after the department notifies their next of kin, police said in an online statement.
The intersection had reopened by late Saturday morning.
Anchorage police shared few other details about the crash Saturday.
Case said the investigation could take months. Crash investigations are complex and involve reviewing medical examiner findings, toxicology test results, vehicle computer readings and evidence from the scene, he said. The involvement of an on-duty officer further complicates the process, according to Case.
“The expectation is we’re going to provide as much information as we can when we get it, but we’re just in the very, very early stages of this investigation,” he said.
Evidence of potential criminal violations would be presented to prosecutors to assess whether to file charges, Case said.
All traffic collisions involving officers also prompt an internal investigation, Romero said.
The call the officer was responding to, Case said, involved community members reporting gunfire and somebody yelling for help.
It’s unclear whether anyone was injured in connection to that incident, which spokesperson Gina Romero said was reported in the area of Arctic Boulevard and West 36th Avenue.
Officers responding to that call were diverted to the crash, she said. No arrests have been made in connection to the shots-fired call, Romero said.
Fatal traffic accidents involving on-duty Anchorage police officers are unusual, Case said. The most recent that Case said he could recall was the 2001 death of Justin Wollam, who died after a suspect’s vehicle collided with his during a pursuit.