Chico PD says officers returned fire, killing suspect Two SWAT sergeants were involved in previous fatal incidents

by Dave Waddell
posted March 21

While few details have been disclosed about the fatal shooting March 2 by Chico police of 43-year-old Michael Oxley, quite a lot is known about two SWAT team sergeants who fired their assault rifles.

The sergeants, Alex Fliehr and Nick Bauer, were each involved in a previous fatal shooting incident, while Fliehr’s unorthodox use of a taser in yet another case led to a civil rights trial in federal court.

Police say Oxley was killed after four SWAT team members returned his fire. In addition to Fliehr and Bauer, officers Tyler Hernandez and Gabe Durney shot at Oxley, said Chico Police Chief Billy Aldridge.

The police were attempting to arrest Oxley for allegedly shooting George Ramirez III, 43, a well-known downtown barber. Ramirez was shot in the neck, head and shoulder after getting into his car in a downtown parking lot about 6 p.m. Feb. 28. Ramirez was soon after air-lifted in critical condition to an out-of-area hospital, but is “making an amazing recovery and talking about returning to work in a few weeks,” said Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey.

Oxley is thought to have been living for at least a month as an Airbnb resident at The Post on Nord, a large apartment complex of mostly college students at 1200 Nord Ave. When the SWAT team attempted to arrest Oxley as he was leaving his apartment about 6 p.m. March 1, “he evaded police by retreating back into the building and his apartment,” Ramsey said.

That prompted a lockdown affecting other residents.

Chico PD, in a press release, said the fact that Oxley was armed “necessitated the use of distractionary devices by search teams. These devices, when deployed, emit very loud noises which sound like explosions or gunshots.”

The booming sounds prompted false social media claims of an active shooter, creating additional fear, according to Chico State’s police department.

Oxley eventually fled to the building’s parking structure, where he was contained on a ramp connecting the fourth and fifth floors. Police negotiated his surrender for a couple of hours before Oxley stood from a crouch and fired at officers using “a pistol with an extended magazine,” Ramsey said.

Aldridge said the incident resulted in the “tragic death of a community member and [is] a traumatic incident for the involved officers, their families, the community, and the organization.”

Ramsey said he hoped to provide more information about the shooting before the end of March.

Alex Fliehr’s history
Eight years ago, Sgt. Fliehr was involved in two controversial cases.

On St. Patrick’s Day 2017, Fliehr had been a Chico cop for just a couple of years when he and Jeremy Gagnebin, an officer with even less experience, shot and killed Desmond Phillips, a 25-year-old Black man in mental crisis.

Phillips was tasered to the floor of his living room but was able to get up. Within a few seconds, the two officers fired 16 times, with two rounds going into an adjoining apartment and another nearly hitting officers near the front door. Phillips was hit by 11 bullets. Fliehr was the first to fire and shot nine times.

Just three months later, with other officers, Fliehr tasered Tyler Rushing in the back after he lay motionless in his own blood. Before the tasering, Rushing, who was in mental crisis, had been shot a total of three times by a private security guard and a police sergeant.

A police practices expert providing court testimony, Roger Clark, said Fliehr showed “imaginary fear” in considering the prone Rushing a threat.

After the federal court trial in October, a jury ruled Fliehr did not use excessive force in the tasering of Rushing.

After the Rushing incident, Fliehr was reportedly reassigned from patrol to the department’s TARGET team. Aldridge promoted him to sergeant in 2024, a few months before the Rushing trial.

Bauer, an investigator
A 19-year law enforcement veteran, Bauer was promoted to sergeant in 2018 by then-Police Chief Mike O’Brien, who is currently a member of the Chico City Council.

Sgt. Bauer was involved in a previous fatal shooting incident, the October 2020 killing of 30-year-old Stephen Vest. Bauer was commanding sergeant when he and officer Tyler Johnson shot Vest, who appeared to be in psychosis and holding a knife.

At the time, bean-bag shotguns were standard equipment in the sergeants’ patrol SUVs. But Bauer’s regular vehicle, on the day Vest died, was in the shop. When the sergeant went to grab the beanbag shotgun, to his surprise there was only a regular shotgun in his replacement vehicle, Ramsey said.

That left officers with just one “less-lethal” option — a taser blast was deployed by another officer. The deployment, however, had little noticeable effect on Vest, who reacted by slightly changing direction and walking toward Johnson.

Johnson was the primary shooter, firing nine rounds, including into Vest’s back multiple times after he had been shot to the ground. Bauer joined the shooting and his two rounds hit Vest, though neither was fatal, according to Ramsey.

Bauer did not turn on his body-worn camera until after Vest was shot.

Before his promotion to sergeant, Bauer, while a Chico PD detective, participated in multiple officer-involved shooting investigations under Ramsey’s direction, including the Rushing case. After Bauer shot Vest, Ramsey brushed off conflict-of-interest concerns raised by the police reform group Concerned Community for Justice (CC4J).

CC4J argued, to no avail, that a state attorney general’s office investigation into the shooting would be more impartial than Butte County’s standard process.

Dave Waddell writes about law enforcement in Butte County.