Capitol crash: Driver had criminal record, mental problems

However, he successfully passed background checks by his employer, Salt Lake City-based Dick Simon Trucking Inc., said company President Kelle Simon.

Bowers had been employed as a driver for Dick Simon Trucking for just eight days, Simon said.

The truck, loaded with evaporated milk, struck the Capitol just as the Assembly on the other side of the building had adjourned a Tuesday evening session concerning the state's power crisis. The driver, who still has not been positively identified by authorities, was incinerated. There were no other deaths or injuries.

"We don't find at this point that there's a reason to believe a terrorist action was involved," said CHP spokesman Ray Blackwell.

There was no evidence that the driver had made any threats against Gov. Gray Davis or any other state officials, Blackwell said. Davis was in Sacramento, but not in the Capitol at the time.

The driver of the tractor trailer drove his truck up and down several streets near the Capitol before he accelerated from two blocks away and drove into the Senate side of the building about 9:15 p.m. Tuesday, said California Highway Patrol spokesman Capt. Dennis Williams.

Simon said his trucking company is cooperating with the CHP, but its background check did not turn up Bowers' criminal record. However, the background check only covered the past five years, after Bowers' main troubles with the law.

The state departments of Corrections and Mental Health said Bowers has been in and out of state prisons and mental health hospitals for years.

Bowers was first sentenced in Mono County to two years for battery on a peace officer in 1986, corrections officials said.

During that sentence, Bowers was paroled four times and returned to prison each time for violations that included assault with a deadly weapon. While on parole, he was convicted in Riverside County of beating his girlfriend's children and was sentenced to six years, department spokesman Russ Heimerich said Wednesday.

He was paroled in July 1995 but was immediately admitted to Atascadero State Hospital as a mentally disturbed offender. Prison officials said he continued to show evidence of major mental illness.

In 1998, he was sent by prison officials to Patten State Hospital, another mental facility, because he was still viewed as a threat to the public, said Nora Romero, spokeswoman for the Department of Mental Health.

Riverside prosecutors and the Department of Mental Health wanted him kept there, but he was released in November 1999 on the order of a Riverside County judge, Heimerich and Romero said.

Riverside prosecutor Valerie Mraz said Wednesday she wanted him hospitalized because he has "schizo-affective disorder" with "grandiose and fantastic delusions."

"Mr. Bower apparently believed in a type of New World Order, which he believed he could participate in," she said, adding he did not explain what he meant.

On Jan. 2, Bowers pleaded guilty to spousal abuse. He was placed on three years' probation and ordered to attend anger-management classes. His wife suffered a slight cut to her lip and scratches to her neck, Mraz said.

Simon said Bowers had complained to a fleet manager about family problems, but Simon didn't know the nature of the problems.

Bowers had picked up a load of milk cans in Modesto on Tuesday and was supposed to deliver them to a distribution center in North Dakota, said Simon.

In the crash Tuesday night, the truck knocked down a wall to a Senate hearing room. The grill of the cab crashed into the room, but the remains of the smashed cab and the trailer were wedged between two columns on the porch. The Capitol facade was blackened by smoke to the third floor.

Engineers were examining the two columns Wednesday to determine if the intense heat of the fire weakened the steel reinforcement inside the concrete pillars, Williams said.

The truck will not be removed until the engineers determine if it is safe, he said. The body was removed Wednesday afternoon.

The extent of the damage was also being assessed Wednesday, said CHP Commissioner Spike Helmick.

Most of the Capitol reopened Wednesday morning. The Senate moved to the Assembly chambers to pass an energy bill.

Lawmakers will consider adding security at the Capitol, said Assembly Speaker Robert Hertzberg. There are security gates at two driveways leading into a basement parking lot at the Capitol, but no fence around the building.

"There's always been a resistance to measures that would place a barrier between the people and the place where the people's business takes place," said Sen. Tom McClintock, R-Northridge. "Obviously the events of last night require a reevaluation of those concerns."<