Anchorage Daily News

HOMER -- Nearly two years after a fatal shootout at the Homer Airport, a federal prosecutor has concluded U.S. Marshals committed no crime when they pressed ahead with the arrest of a dangerous fugitive despite the presence of nearby crowds and two small children in his car.

Jason Karlo Anderson, wanted on drug charges and considered "armed and dangerous," died in a gun battle when marshals and Homer police tried to arrest him in the airport parking lot on March 1, 2006. Anderson's 2-year-old son, Jason, was shot in the head as he sat in his car seat. An infant daughter was unharmed.

In a brief report released Thursday, U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Sullivan of Seattle said Anderson fired first, intentionally shot his own son in the face, then turned his gun on himself.

Young Jason is in medical foster care in Minnesota. He has one eye, can move his tongue and his right arm, and remains heavily drugged to prevent seizures, said his great- aunt, Colleen Murray.

The U.S. attorney's report focused on federal statutes governing action taken "under color of law." No violation of constitutional rights occurred during the marshal-led confrontation, it said.

The report provided no new details of what happened at the airport just before dusk that day. It referred to "allegedly poor tactical decisions and judgements that led to the deadly confrontation." But in an interview, Sullivan would not say if he felt the marshals' tactics had indeed been poor.

"With 20/20 hindsight we can all see ways that law enforcement could have improved their apprehension plan," Sullivan said in a prepared statement.

After 23 months, no official account of the incident -- or description of the "plan" -- has been made public. Sullivan did not release a 57-page summary of the Alaska State Trooper investigation, citing federal privacy statutes.

The state Department of Law has the trooper report and is taking one last look to see if prosecution of any officers is warranted, said deputy attorney general Ron Svobodny. A year ago, the state issued a press release saying "certain facts" of the shooting "may constitute violations of Alaska's criminal statutes."

By all accounts, Jason Anderson, 31, was a brutal man. He had served time in prison for assault and kidnapping, and was wanted on a federal warrant for meth dealing in Duluth, Minn. He had been living in Alaska under an alias for a year, along with an abused girlfriend and their two children.

The girlfriend, Cherry Dietzmann, was cooperating with marshals at the time of the arrest attempt. She said Anderson held on to the children and threatened to kill them if she went to the authorities. She said she warned the marshals not to approach when he had the children.

Anderson was lured to the Homer airport to exchange his rental car. In an interview that night, a rental car agent working with the marshals said Anderson called on his cell phone and refused to come into the crowded terminal, where police waited with a stun gun. Anderson said he had his children in the car and asked the agent to bring out the new key, according to the agent.

The Homer terminal happened to be full that evening with students and adults heading to Italy on a charter choir trip.

Two federal marshals and four Homer officers approached Anderson's car and Anderson started shooting, Sullivan said. The state medical examiner said Anderson was shot nine times before shooting himself.

Lawyers for Dietzmann and her children say a medical dispute remains whether young Jason was actually shot by police. They announced by press release Thursday they had filed an administrative claim against the U.S. Marshal's Office, a first step toward filing a civil lawsuit.

Marc Otte, the deputy chief U.S. marshal for the Alaska district, said he couldn't speak in any detail while civil litigation was pending.

"We do feel like we were in the right," Otte said. "I can tell you the deputies involved had those children's safety foremost on their mind."

One Homer choir parent said Thursday the arrest attempt seemed unnecessarily volatile, even if not illegal. Ted West also complained about the public being kept in the dark.

"Anchorage had a shooting with police and a chase recently, and they had information out in three or four months," said West.

In his three-page summary released Thursday, U.S. Attorney Sullivan said that even if bad tactics result in a deadly confrontation, that is not enough to allow a claim that Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable seizures have been violated. He cited appeals court precedents.

"There is no question that the events of March 1, 2006 were a tragedy," Sullivan said in writing. "But it was a tragedy of Jason Anderson's own making."

It's easy to second-guess officers after the fact, Sullivan said.

"But none of us were in their shoes, making decisions minute to minute. And none of us know what the outcome might have been, had they allowed Jason Anderson to drive out of that parking lot. Anderson was a ticking time bomb, who could have injured or killed more innocent people in his efforts to avoid apprehension."

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