Alaska State Troopers on Saturday identified four troopers, including a new recruit, and a Fairbanks police lieutenant who fired weapons in a pursuit in Fairbanks on Wednesday, killing one suspect and wounding another.
According to a dispatch posted online, Fairbanks patrol troopers Joshua Rallo and Malik Jones, with 10 and 12 years in the department, respectively, and trooper Kamau Leigh, a member of the Fairbanks Rural Service Unit with three years in the department, fired their weapons in the incident, as well as trooper Silas Hessler, a recruit with seven months on the job.
Lieutenant James Geier, a 22-year veteran of the Fairbanks Police Department, also fired his weapon, troopers said.
The five officers opened fire on a Pontiac that had failed to yield to a traffic stop moments earlier, and whose occupants had exchanged gunfire with police while being pursued, according to troopers.
Troopers had tried to stop driver Vincent Perdue, 33, for failing to use a turn signal and for windows that were too darkly tinted. Instead of stopping, Perdue accelerated, leading police on a chase, troopers said.
Perdue and his 20-year-old passenger, Sarah Smoke, leaned out the windows to shoot at police, troopers said. When the car passed police cars while heading into a ditch, four troopers and one Fairbanks police officer fired on the vehicle, according to trooper dispatches.
Perdue was pronounced dead at the scene. Smoke was taken to a hospital for treatment. At about 4 p.m. Friday, she was arrested on charges of third-degree assault and first-degree misconduct involving weapons and was being held at the Fairbanks jail without bail.
The incident was one of two traffic stops that ended in gunfire in Fairbanks this week. In a separate incident Tuesday, a man who was reported to be driving a stolen car was shot and wounded by multiple troopers shortly after 10 a.m. at the Davis Road ball fields.