Review clears trooper

WASILLA — The Alaska State Trooper who shot and killed a motorist in March acted to save another officer and was, therefore, justified, according to the results of a legal review released Friday.

Whenever an officer uses his gun in the line of duty, the Alaska Bureau of Investigation looks into the matter the same way they would any shooting, according to trooper officials. The fruits of that investigation are then handed over to the state’s Office of Special Prosecutions and Appeals.

In this case, OSPA investigated the March 9 shooting of Gordon Samel on Seward Meridian Parkway in Wasilla.

“The investigation revealed that Trooper Daron Cooper was legally justified in believing that WPD Officer Brandon Gray was about to be struck with Mr. Samel’s vehicle. The actions undertaken by the officers were determined to be an effort to stop Mr. Samel before he caused serious injury or death to Officer Gray,” according to a press release from the troopers.

The case in question began at 8:37 p.m. that Sunday with a report of a dangerous driver in Wasilla. The caller said two intoxicated men pulled into a parking lot at the corner of the Parks and Palmer-Wasilla highways.

Troopers and Wasilla Police found a vehicle matching the description and pursued it through downtown, through the neighborhoods off Hermon Road, to the corner of Whispering Woods Drive and Seward Meridian Parkway, where the vehicle spun in a circle, surrounded by patrol cars.

Troopers say that Gray was on foot when the driver started backing the pickup toward him. That’s when Cooper shot and killed Samel. He was 52.

Samel’s relatives have described him in media accounts as a beloved family man who battled with his demons. A Frontiersman account from 2001 describes a bizarre incident in which he tromped through a neighborhood swearing and acting strangely before setting a porch on fire. In court documents at the time, he admitted to being high on cocaine.

Samel also had a brief brush with fame, mentioned in the well-known John Krakauer book “Into the Wild” as one of the hunters who found the decaying remains of Christopher McCandless in a derelict bus on a trail in Denali National Park. McCandless’ story was later made into a movie.

Cooper’s name comes up in Frontiersman archives as one of five troopers to fire their service pistols Nov. 14, 2009, at a distraught woman who had been threatening a wheelchair-bound man with a shotgun at a home off Wasilla-Fishhook Road. A review by state investigators and prosecutors cleared Cooper and the other four officers in that shooting, in which Nora York, 58, of Wasilla, was killed after she refused to disarm and pointed the gun at two troopers.

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