Warning Cited in Capitol Crash

A driving instructor for the trucker who smashed his big rig into the state Capitol on Jan. 16 recommended last year that he be fired but was overruled by company superiors, the California Highway Patrol reported Wednesday.

The CHP said the instructor, Glenn R. Horn, insisted that the driver, Mike Bowers, 37, an ex-convict, mental patient and substance abuser who was killed in the fiery crash, “had too much going on in his head to be a safe truck driver.”

When executives of Dick Simon Trucking Co. ignored that advice, Horn told CHP investigators, he quit. The company is based in Salt Lake City.

The CHP said that Bowers was certified by a chiropractor in January 2000 as fit to drive a commercial truck but that he flunked a behind-the-wheel test for a truck driver’s license. He took the test over a few days later and passed.

Bowers clearly broke many state laws, the CHP said, but “no violations of federal or California state law were identified with Dick Simon Trucking.”

The incident with the instructor is related in a three-volume report by the CHP after its investigation of the nighttime crash of the loaded tractor-trailer into the granite south portico of the 127-year-old Capitol.

In the report, the CHP concluded that Bowers, whom it described as angry, psychopathic and delusional, deliberately rammed the building at an estimated 46 mph, even making last-second steering corrections to make certain he would crash head on.

Bowers, who had variously described himself as the “King of the New World Order” and a “messenger” of God, was incinerated in the wreckage, which wedged itself into an unoccupied Senate hearing room. No one else was hurt, but preliminary estimates have put damage at as much as $10 million.

At the time of the crash, Bowers, whose criminal history dated to 1982, was serving his second stint as a newly hired driver for Simon. Company officials have previously said he passed their background check for employment.

Bowers was sent to prison in 1986 for battery on a peace officer and had been in and out of correctional institutions at least four times before the summer of 1995, when he was paroled and transferred to Atascadero State Hospital. Other offenses included assault with a deadly weapon, battering a child and resisting arrest.

He was later moved to Patton State Hospital, from which he was discharged in the fall of 1999 after a jury determined that he was no longer a threat to himself or others.

The CHP said that the investigation failed to determine why Bowers crashed into the Capitol and that “his reasons perished with him.”

But the report said the inquiry “established, without a doubt, that Bowers intentionally rammed the Capitol building.”

Toxicology reports determined that he was not under the influence of alcohol or illegal drugs, nor did he have toxic levels of antipsychotic or mood-stabilizing prescription medications in his system, the CHP said.

Based on interviews and research of mental health, prison and law enforcement records, the report painted a picture of Bowers as delusional and angry at his wife, female dispatchers at the company and a government that he believed had mistreated him. He also had great difficulty holding a job.

Driving trainer Horn said he was assigned to accompany Bowers on a trip March 10, 2000, to evaluate his skills and performance.

Shortly after leaving the loading dock, Bowers became argumentative, refused to accept driving tips and insisted on making calls on a cellular phone, Horn told investigators.

“From time to time, Bowers would start to talk about drugs and some kind of secret society” and “seemed to be living in a high-society dream world of movie stars,” Horn said.

At one point, Horn said, he stopped the truck and demanded that Bowers get out. But one of his superiors ordered the two on to Atlanta so Bowers could “have more over-the-road evaluation.”

Horn called the trip the “worst experience of his driving career” and upon his return told his superior that Bowers should be fired or given another instructor, the report said.

When Simon executives declined to do either, Horn said, he quit in protest. Simon officials “just would not listen and act upon what he had to say about Bowers,” the report said.

Two weeks later, Bowers also quit, the report said, “when he found the work undesirable.” In the next few months, he quit or was fired from jobs at three other trucking companies, the longest lasting 44 days.

He was rehired by Simon on Jan, 5, 11 days before the Capitol crash. Simon officials have said that he passed their background examination for employment and that they did not know he had been in prison.

Simon officials did not return repeated calls by a reporter for comment on the CHP report.

The CHP said Bowers, whose travels were monitored by the company’s global-positioning satellite, got “easily disoriented on his routes,” was dissatisfied with the truck’s performance and was angry that the cab heater did not work.

Bowers began the day Jan. 16 near a Nestle distribution center in Lathrop, just south of Stockton, by sending unsolicited messages to a dispatcher, complaining about being cold.

“This, coupled with the night spent in the sleeper of his truck without a heater, infuriated Bowers all the more,” the report said.

He also made derogatory remarks about his wife, Tyrna Matthews, to a dispatcher and mentioned that he was going to get an annulment, the document said.

He eventually agreed to pick up a load of canned milk from a Nestle plant in Modesto and drive it to the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

At 8:22 p.m., a global-positioning location report said, Bowers was 1.6 miles outside of Sacramento.

As he drove through the city’s Midtown area, Bowers got involved in a dispute with a motorist who honked at him and later identified Bowers as the driver of the truck. Bowers also came within seconds of colliding with two light rail trains, one of which CHP Commissioner D.O. “Spike” Helmick said was carrying 180 passengers.

Heading into downtown, the CHP said, Bowers made at least one loop around the Capitol, accelerating to “freeway speeds” and ignoring three stop signs.

In his last and fatal run, he gunned the big rig from about six blocks away on two-lane 11th Street, horn blasting, and roared through the stop signs and a red traffic signal.

Jumping a curb, the truck sped over a grassy parkway leading to the elevated south portico and hurtled into the building, touching off an inferno that reached at least four stories high. The fuel tanks burst, and superheated cans of milk exploded.

“He could have had a truckload of bombs,” Helmick said.

Eight witnesses told investigators that Bowers was “upset” with state officials as a result of his incarceration and commitment to mental hospitals.

“He became further enraged at state government when he reportedly learned of” recent action to dismiss a legal claim he had filed against the state, the report said.

In a psychiatric report written after the crash, Dr. Leonard M. Zunin said there was no evidence that Bowers was actively suicidal and no suicide note was found. Investigators, however, did recover an envelope with the phrase “certificate of marriage” printed on it.

Handwritten comments on the envelope included, “write on stone . . . King of the New World Order 1986-2000 . . . the will go’s to Miss Chula* . . . “

In the report, Zunin said he believes Bowers was aware as he drove his truck into the Capitol that he might injure or kill other people and might die himself, and that the crash would receive substantial media attention.

Bowers may have believed, the psychiatrist said, that God or an inner voice was directing him. “He felt at various times he was a messenger of God and a king of what he referred to as the New World Order,” Zunin said.