A man shot to death by police yesterday at Pearlridge Center was identified today by the Honolulu medical examiner's office as Thomas Joseph Loewe.

Autopsy findings today listed cause of death as loss of blood "due to gunshot wound to the torso" and "significant multiple gunshot wounds" as other conditions. Manner of death was homicide.

Loewe, 47, had a criminal record which includes 19 convictions, including two for felony auto theft in 1994.

A plainclothes police officer, described by Chief Boisse Correa last night as a 15-year HPD veteran, shot Loewe as he attempted to drive off from a second-floor parking lot at Pearlridge Center Phase III to escape from Crime Reduction Unit personnel from the Wahiawa and Pearl City districts who reported seeing him taking items from an unattended vehicle.

Five shots were fired, said Correa, but some witnesses said they heard seven.

Loewe was pronounced dead at the scene at 3:24 p.m.

A police news release says the CRU officers allegedly saw Loewe driving in a "suspicious manner" and followed him into the parking lot. The officers allegedly saw him take items from another vehicle. As Loewe returned to his own car, police confronted him, but Loewe allegedly accelerated at and attempted to drive away.

In the process, one police officer was dragged by the fleeing car, another was nearly struck before Loewe tried to break through two occupied police cars blocking the exit. One of the cars was rammed.

The case is being investigated as a first-degree attempted murder, two counts of unauthorized entry into a motor vehicle and first-degree criminal property damage. It is also standard procedure for HPD Internal Affairs to conduct an investigation independent of the criminal inquiry when an officer is involved in a shooting.

Reach Rod Ohira at rohira@honoluluadvertiser.com.