Retrial Ordered in Shooting by Off-Duty Officer

A Superior Court judge ordered a retrial Friday for a former Long Beach police officer charged with shooting and wounding a motorist during a traffic dispute.

Alan B. Ice, 46, of Fountain Valley is expected to go on trial again next month for the Sept. 28, 1991, shooting of Neil Cramer, 37, a Santa Ana carpenter who has recovered from his injuries. Ice was fired from his job after the shooting.

Jurors in the first trial deadlocked 8-4 in favor of convicting Ice. Judge Everett W. Dickey said said the jury’s leanings were a factor in his decision to order a retrial. Dickey set a Dec. 8 retrial date.

Jurors will be asked to decide whether the shooting was intentional, as prosecutors claim, or an accident, as Ice insists.

The shooting occurred after Cramer swerved his camper truck in front of Ice’s Jeep to avoid a boy who had fallen from his bicycle. Ice blew his horn at Cramer and the two men began yelling and exchanged obscene hand gestures.

Ice told jurors he then grabbed his weapon because he feared Cramer was also reaching for a weapon. Ice said the gun misfired when his vehicle lurched forward due to a mechanical problem.

Whether Cramer had armed himself with a hammer also became a key issue for jurors, with prosecution witnesses admitting that they gave inconsistent accounts.

Defense attorney John D. Barnett had asked the judge to dismiss the charges. Barnett called the shooting an isolated event.

Ice was fired from the police department for being “unnecessarily armed” and shooting Cramer “intentionally and without justification.”