Passing driver kills man attacking Arizona trooper on road

PHOENIX (AP) — A man who shot and wounded an Arizona state trooper today along a remote highway and then started slamming the helpless officer's head into the pavement as the two struggled was shot to death by passing driver, authorities said.

Trooper Edward Andersson, a 27-year veteran of the Department of Public Safety, was shot in the right shoulder and chest in what authorities called an ambush and was in serious but stable condition after surgery at a Goodyear hospital.

"My trooper would not be alive without his assistance," DPS Director Frank Milstead said of the driver who stopped.

Arizona has a "defense-of-third-person" law that allows someone to use deadly force against another who is threatening or injuring a third person. It was not unusual the passing driver was armed in this gun-friendly state with loose regulations.

"Arizona was open-carry before it was a state," Charles Heller, co-founder of guns-rights group the Arizona Citizens Defense League, said of laws allowing people to carry firearms in public. "If you see a guy walking down the street in Tucson, Ariz., with a gun on, you don't think much of it. It's natural."

The drama unfolded at an early-morning rollover wreck on Interstate 10 in the desert west of Phoenix that ejected and killed a woman. Authorities believe the man who shot Andersson was driving the car that crashed.