In the dark hours of July 17, 1986, Anchorage felt the sudden shock of gunshots and sirens. Patrol Officer Harry Biddington Hanson, Jr.—a 41-year-old male K-9 officer with the Anchorage Police Department—moved toward the unfolding danger after a traffic stop turned violent. Moments earlier, a gunman had fired on Officer Cindy Mittasch, seized her patrol car, crashed it into a cinderblock wall, and fled on foot into the trees.
Hanson left his own dog, Baron, secured in his cruiser and joined another K-9 team to track the suspect through the spruce and shadowed lots, the search fanning out across streets that were just beginning to pale with morning light.
As the officers closed on a hiding place beneath a large spruce, the suspect opened fire. A single round struck the 41-year-old male officer in the neck. Fellow officers answered with their own gunfire. The shooter—identified as 27-year-old William A. Weitz—was wounded, handcuffed, and rushed to the hospital. Hanson, the 41-year-old male victim, was taken to the hospital as well, where he died of his wounds. The scene left a stark imprint: spent casings, a crashed patrol car, and a K-9 still waiting in a silent cruiser.
The investigation and prosecution moved quickly. On July 23, 1986, a grand jury indicted Weitz on six counts—among them first-degree murder for killing Officer Hanson, two counts of attempted murder, robbery, assault, and weapons misconduct. A jury later convicted him on all counts. Judge Seaborn J. Buckalew, Jr., imposed consecutive terms that stacked to 169 years with no possibility of parole, a sentence the Alaska Court of Appeals affirmed after finding the record supported the trial court's “worst offender” assessment. The appellate opinion recounted the night's sequence—robbery before the stop, the traffic stop and first gunfire, the stolen cruiser, the pursuit, and the near point-blank killing of the 41-year-old male officer—clarifying not only who pulled the trigger but why the law deemed him beyond release.
What remained was the weight of loss. Hanson had served eight years with the Anchorage Police Department—six in the K-9 unit—and left behind a wife and five children. A veteran, he was laid to rest four days later at Fort Richardson National Cemetery, recorded as Harry Biddington Hanson, Jr., CPT, U.S. Army, Section G, Site 1750. His department's roll of fallen officers still tells the story of that morning: the sprint toward danger, the hushed approach beneath a spruce, and the final exchange that cost a 41-year-old male officer his life and ensured his killer would never walk free.
