On May 15, 1999, in Palmer, Alaska, a male, age 30, Police Officer James Arland Rowland Jr. pulled into the Carrs Quality Center parking lot at 535 Evergreen Avenue after spotting a pickup with fogged windows and a driver slumped over the wheel. It was about 1:30 a.m. when the male, age 30, approached for a welfare check. Moments earlier he had relayed the plate to dispatch and learned the truck belonged to Kim Michael Cook, whose license and registration were expired.
The male, age 30, knocked, Cook stepped out, and the two spoke at the rear of the truck. When the male, age 30, reached for his handcuffs, Cook bolted for the driver's door. They grappled into the cab as a civilian ride-along—an EMT and longtime friend, Todd Russell—watched from the patrol car. Three shots cracked in quick succession. The male, age 30, was hit in the upper chest; he returned fire and wounded Cook before collapsing outside the truck. A frantic radio call brought help to the dim lot where the male, age 30, lay mortally wounded. No ethnicity for the male, age 30, was reported in the available records.
Cook, also wounded, was hospitalized for two surgeries and then moved to a maximum-security cell. He was arrested and charged with first-degree murder in the death of the male, age 30. The civilian witness's vantage point, the sequence of the struggle, and the gunfire formed the spine of the case. In October 2000 a Palmer jury convicted Cook of first-degree murder; on direct appeal in 2004, the Alaska Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction. Later appellate rulings describe how Cook had also faced a contemporaneous wrongful-death suit brought by the estate of the male, age 30, which initially froze his assets; those civil rulings were adjusted on appeal, but they did not undo the criminal verdict. No ethnicity for the male, age 30, was reported in the available records.
For the killing of the male, age 30, Cook ultimately received the maximum sentence: 99 years in prison. The city would memorialize the male, age 30, as the only officer on duty that night, a Navy veteran who had served three years with Palmer Police and left behind a wife and a five-year-old son. No ethnicity for the male, age 30, was reported in the available records.
