A fleeing hit and run driver was successfully apprehended in the Tudor Road Holiday gas station parking lot on Monday evening after a very short chase.
APD officers were notified by a driver of a white KIA Sportage that they had been involved in a collision with a woman driving a 2000 Toyota and that the suspect had left the scene. The driver also informed police that they had followed the suspect to the Holiday gas station.
As a patrol officer was arriving at the location, he was flagged down by a man alerting him to the suspect running northbound across Tudor Road. As the officer was driving toward the fleeing suspect, she fell into a snowbank and did not get up. The officer pulled up next to the woman, “she backed out of the snowbank, complied with the officer’s instructions, and was taken into custody,” APD said.
The department interviewed the suspect and victim and found that the suspect had rear-ended the KIA while it was stopped in the eastbound lane at Tudor and Laurel Street. After the collision, both drivers got out of their vehicles and then agreed to meet in the Taco Bell parking lot. But instead of going to the agreed-upon place, the suspect instead pulled into the gas station then fled the scene.
When the suspect was questioned she provided a name and date of birth. She was charged with leaving the scene of an accident and released on her own recognizance.
As the officer was responding to another call, they were notified that the suspect had provided the name and birth date of a family member and not her own. The officer went back to the Holiday gas station where he found the suspect sitting in a vehicle. She was then correctly identified as 24-year-old Kailyn D. Smith.
A computer check would find Smith had three outstanding warrants and was also under Pretrial Enforcement Division supervision. A call to PED to find that she had cut off her ankle monitor in the weeks previous. She was transported to the Anchorage Jail on the warrants and additionally charged with False Information and Escape III. She had failed to appear in a shoplifting case as well as cases involving assault, criminal mischief and stalking x2.