The Juneau Police Department has released the name of the officer involved in a fatal shooting Sunday.<\/p>\n
Officer James Esbenshade shot and killed 34-year-old Kelly Michael Stephens as Stephens allegedly approached Esbenshade, screaming threats and swinging a <\/a>chain<\/a>, wrote JPD Public Safety Manager Erann Kalwara in a press release Friday <\/a>afternoon<\/a>.<\/p>\n Police say Stephens was wanted in connection for a 911 call about two hours earlier that evening where a man allegedly threatened a shopper outside the Super Bear IGA. Esbenshade investigated the call, then later another 911 call from the Chinook Apartments, where he encountered Stephens, Kalwara said.<\/p>\n Esbenshade has been a member of JPD since 2009, the police statement said.<\/p>\n Alaska’s Department of Law’s Office of Special Prosecutions is investigating the case to evaluate if the shooting was justified, Juneau District Attorney Angie Kemp said at an earlier press conference.<\/p>\n Per JPD policy, the names of officers involved in shootings are withheld from the public for at least 24 hours, and are placed on administrative leave.<\/p>\n Both JPD and Alaska State Troopers are still investigating the case.<\/p>\n This instance marked the second JPD officer involved shooting in 2019, with a nonfatal shooting taking place in August. The last fatal officer-involved shooting in Juneau was in 2007. <\/p>\n \u2022 Contact reporter Michael S. Lockett at 757-621-1197 or mlockett@juneauempire.com.<\/b><\/p>\n The case is still under investigation. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":534,"featured_media":57221,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[640,75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-57220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-cops-and-courts","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57220"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=57220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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