attacking him; the officer fatally shot Johnson twice in the chest. Dismissal from State Police Fowler was dismissed from the state police in 1968 for physically attacking his supervisor. His supervisor, Sergeant T. B. Barden, said that Fowler was angry about a poor job evaluation and had attacked him as he was getting into his car. Fowler and his attorney George Beck said that Fowler had taken time off to mourn with his mother after his father's death. He said that the state troopers did not give him sick leave for this absence. In the melee, he rammed Barden's head into a windshield. Barden was knocked unconscious and taken by ambulance to a Birmingham hospital. Fowler entered the US Army after being dismissed from the state troopers and served in Vietnam. His brother Robert had died there, and Fowler was able to join his former rifle unit. In 2007 Barden said that after Fowler returned to the United States withdrawal from Vietnam, he called his former supervisor and apologized for his action. Barden said that they had a good talk and he bore no ill will toward Fowler. He had thought the man bound for a promising career before that incident. US Army service and decades in Southeast Asia Fowler served with the U.S. Army in Vietnam War from 1968 to 1974 as a Sergeant First Class, and was awarded the Silver Star twice, along with the Purple Heart, for his injuries in combat during his military service. After the US pulled out of Vietnam, Fowler remained in Southeast Asia, living and working in northern Thailand. For the next two decades, Fowler returned to the United States for brief periods to take care of business in Alabama but lived primarily in Thailand. During this period he became interested in Buddhism, married Noie, a woman from Burma, and started a family in Thailand. In the late 1980s Fowler testified in a military case involving a alleged murder-for-hire plot, in which an army sergeant wanted to kill his captain. His life took another turn a few years later, when Fowler was convicted by Thai authorities of heroin trafficking. He served about five years in a Thai prison. Later life After returning to the United States for good in 1996, Fowler settled with his second wife on a farm in rural Geneva County. He farmed for the remainder of his life. In a