St. Paul police officers will not be charged for fatally shooting a 36-year-old man who officers reported pointed a gun at them last year, the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office announced Wednesday.
A warrant was issued for Mychel Stowers’ arrest when prosecutors charged him Oct. 24, 2024, with the murder of his pregnant wife, Damara Kirkland.
As two officers approached Stowers in their police vehicle, they each reported they saw him pull a handgun from his waist area and point at them. Their statements were “consistent with and corroborated by” in-squad camera footage, according to a county attorney’s office memo of their review of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigation.
The BCA presented their findings to the county attorney’s office. Prosecutors concluded the use of deadly force by officers Matthew Foy and Eric Jaworski was legally justified under Minnesota law.
Officers received an anonymous report just after 1 p.m. on Nov. 9, 2024, that Stowers was on a bicycle at a laundromat in the 1100 block of West Seventh Street, police said last year.
Police monitored the business to determine if he was inside when the same person called again and reported that the man on a bike “in front of the business was in fact Stowers,” according to a statement from police at the time. “Officers established a perimeter in (an) attempt to contain Stowers from fleeing the area and set a plan to arrest him.”
The man rode the bike south on Bay Street to Watson Avenue “where uniformed officers in marked squad cars closed in on him,” police said.
“Before officers could confirm his identity, the man, now identified as Stowers, produced a handgun and pointed it at the officers,” according to a statement last year from the BCA. Foy fired a handgun and Jaworski a rifle, the BCA said.
Excerpts of body-camera footage released by police last year showed Foy was driving and Jaworski fired through the windshield from the passenger seat.
Stowers was charged in the fatal shooting of Kirkland, 35, in her apartment in St. Paul’s North End on Oct. 19, 2024. An autopsy found she was eight to nine weeks pregnant, and one of the murder charges was for the death of her unborn child. Stowers was also charged with shooting a man in the leg as he allegedly carjacked him and fled the area.
Stowers was released from prison in March 2024 in the 2008 killing of a man in St. Paul. He was on work release, and the Minnesota Department of Corrections said he was under supervision by their agency and a halfway house.
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