Needing shoes, man rams house with pickup

WILLOW — Alaska State Troopers say a man locked out of his house during a domestic dispute used decidedly unconventional means to get inside.

According to an AST report, the incident happened near Whispering Birch Circle in Willow shortly after 9:30 p.m. Sunday.

A 13-year-old boy made the first call to troopers, saying Michael Campbell had hit his mother and was trying to get back into the house. While he was on the phone, the boy said Campbell had “jumped into his pickup and backed it into the house trying to get in,” Alaska State Trooper Tage Toll wrote in an affidavit filed in the case.

Toll drove to the scene and talked to the boy, who said the pickup used to ram the house was a 1968 Chevrolet. After the boy told him he was calling the cops, Campbell switched pickups and left. The boy told troopers Campbell had a pistol and was drunk.

Toll also talked to the woman who said Campbell had pushed her around. Toll said the woman was otherwise “uncooperative and intoxicated.”

After talking to the boy and his mother, Toll surveyed the scene.

“The pickup Campbell used was still in the driveway. There was a smashed barbecue grill stuck on the bumper leaking propane gas,” the report says. “Tracks of the pickup showed it backing into and through the north wall of the house. The pickup pulled forward and was parked in the driveway. The house had a pickup-sized hole in it. Debris was laying all over the interior as well as on the driveway.”

Toll said he then went looking for Campbell, who he’d been told had run to hide in the woods. Toll spotted him near the end of the road and told him to go home to be interviewed.

Campbell told the trooper he and the woman had been drinking on a couch by a fire outside the house. The woman got mad at him and twisted his neck. He threw her off of him and she ran inside.

“Campbell needed shoes since he wasn’t wearing any, so he went toward the house and found the doors locked,” Toll wrote. “Needing shoes, he got in the pickup and rammed the ‘door’ to get his shoes. Campbell left to settle down. Campbell denied hiding in the woods.”

Campbell was jailed for criminal mischief involving domestic violence at the Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility. Jail records showed Thursday morning that he had since bailed out.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.