A state prosecutor says two Anchorage police officers who shot and killed a 25-year-old man during a February car chase, in which he struck several vehicles, were on foot and feared for their lives when he backed up at them.

APD held a press conference on the death of Carl Bowie III Tuesday afternoon, following an announcement from the state Office of Special Prosecutions and Appeals that senior patrol officers Alan Rydberg and Roger Billiet had been cleared of wrongdoing after firing a total of seven rounds at him.

Police laid out a more exact view at APD headquarters of what happened at the intersection of 53rd Avenue and Windflower Street on the morning of Feb. 19, at 10:53 a.m. Their presentation featured an account of events by APD Chief Mark Mew and Detective Mark Huelskoetter, as well as a dashboard-camera video from Rydberg's patrol vehicle.

According to a letter released by OSPA Tuesday, sent to Huelskoetter by Assistant District Attorney Greggory Olson, the incident began at about 8:15 a.m. Feb. 19, when a green 2002 Ford F-150 pickup truck was stolen from a driveway on the 3600 block of Alamosa Drive.

Shortly after 10:15 a.m., police received a report of a suspicious person at the Dimond Center mall, who was looking into parked cars there and subsequently got into the stolen pickup truck.

Huelskoetter says the person who reported the vehicle forwarded mobile-phone photos and a description of both the suspect and truck to police, who encountered the truck at the intersection of 88th Avenue and Lake Otis Parkway at 10:35 a.m.

The sequence of events leading to Bowie's death started when the truck -- with him at the wheel and a female in the passenger seat -- reached a dead end near the intersection of 53rd and Windflower with an APD cruiser in pursuit, then headed back the way it came.

"The truck turned around and, while fleeing the area, struck Officer Jackson's police vehicle," Olson wrote. "Officer Jackson put that information out on the radio. Officer Armstrong, who witnessed the impact announced on the radio that there was a felony assault on an officer."

As the truck returned to the intersection, it violently swerved through a column of arriving APD vehicles.

"The truck careened around the corner, barely missing Officer Billiet's vehicle, striking Officer Mitchell's vehicle in the rear and then striking Officer Rydberg's vehicle with a glancing head-on collision before careening into a snow bank," Olson wrote. "Officer Mitchell (as did Officers Rydberg and Billiet) thought that the truck was going to remain stuck in the snow. Officer Mitchell approached the vehicle from the passenger side."

Rydberg told Olson that he knew the truck was stolen, and was prepared to deploy spike strips on Lake Otis before it turned into the neighborhood. Shortly before his vehicle was struck by the F-150, he said he heard Armstrong's report of a felony assault, and saw people on foot shoveling snow and walking dogs.
The video of the incident from the dash cam in Rydberg's cruiser shows the pickup truck missing Billiet's vehicle, striking Mitchell's vehicle and passing Rydberg's with a glancing blow on the driver's side.

"He stated that his vehicle was struck with such force that he thought his air bags would deploy and was surprised when they did not," Olson wrote. "Officer Rydberg exited his vehicle and approached the truck with his handgun drawn. He was shouting commands to 'get your hands up.'"

Billiet, who can be seen advancing on foot in the video to the gap between Mitchell's vehicle and Rydberg's, echoed those concerns.

"Officer Billiet outlined that the driver had hit cars and the driver did not care that the police were there," Olson wrote. "Officer Billiet was concerned for his own safety and that of the other officers."

As officers approached the truck, it suddenly shifted into reverse -- nearly striking Billiet, and passing the dash cam in Rydberg's cruiser once more. Mew says Rydberg fired on the pickup's windshield from outside of the dash cam's view to the left, while Billiet can be seen raising his weapon and firing.

"Officer Rydberg stated that he was between (five) to (seven) yards away from the truck when he fired two rounds from his service pistol into the lower side of the driver's window," Olson wrote. "Officer Rydberg said that he could see the rounds impact the left side of the driver's chest. Officer Rydberg stated that he was the first officer to shoot and that he heard Officer Billiet shooting after him."

At the time, Billiet thought he fired three rounds at the truck, but later told Olson that he discovered that he'd fired five times when he checked his magazine.

"Officer Billiet's immediate thought was to get out of the way. He thought the truck was going to run over him," Olson wrote. "As he moved off to the side he felt he needed to stop the driver of the truck."



After the truck was fired on, it continued backward, hitting a set of mailboxes and getting its rear stuck in a driveway's snow bank. Officers tried to revive Bowie but he died at the scene, with medical examiners later saying one of the three rounds that hit him had struck his aorta and killed him.

Olson says Bowie's uninjured passenger was taken to APD, where she told a detective she was undergoing heroin withdrawal when Bowie told her earlier that morning that he'd gotten "a new car." She asked if he could give her a ride to go purchase some heroin, but Bowie panicked and tried to flee shortly after picking her up at her home when he saw a female police officer.

"The female passenger said she could see the lights on the police car, 'but he wouldn't stop,'" Olson wrote. "She said that Bowie did not stop because he did not want to go back to jail."

Olson says crime scene investigators recovered seven .45-caliber shell casings at the scene of the shooting. He also cited the sequence of events, as seen in Rydberg's dash cam, as a factor in concluding that Bowie had assaulted APD officers in the moments before his death.
"At a minimum he had committed several acts of assault in the third degree (a class C felony)," Olson wrote. "Assault in the third degree is committed if a person recklessly places another person in fear of imminent serious physical injury by means of a dangerous instrument...Bowie's vehicle was a dangerous instrument given the manner in which he used it against the pursuing officers."

Olson concludes his analysis by agreeing with Billiet and Rydberg that they were using deadly force in self-defense, as allowed under state law when someone "reasonably believes the use of deadly force is necessary"