WOODBURY – No charges will be brought against the state trooper who shot and killed a suspect in multiple violent crimes following a manhunt in September 2024.

Ali Ali, 28, was traveling north on the Thruway on Sept. 18, 2024, in a vehicle he had allegedly stolen at knife point four hours earlier when State Police received an alert to arrest him. Ali was also wanted by the New York City Police Department for a stabbing at a Brooklyn laundromat and two attempted car thefts that occurred two days prior, according to the investigative report from the state attorney general’s Office of Special Investigation.

Shortly before 6 a.m., State Police began following Ali’s vehicle near the town of Ramapo. OnStar remotely disabled the vehicle in the town of Woodbury. As the car slowed, it collided with a tractor-trailer, struck a guardrail and caught on fire, causing Ali to flee on foot into the woods.

The State Police Special Operation Response Team, Orange County sheriff’s deputies and Woodbury police officers searched for Ali for approximately four hours while the town of Woodbury sheltered in place. After a Highland Mills homeowner notified the Woodbury Police Department that their trail camera had captured someone matching Ali’s description, police were able to zero in on the wanted man, who was holding a knife.

In body-worn camera footage of the incident, officers can be heard telling Ali multiple times to drop the weapon. When Ali didn’t comply, troopers deployed two flash-bangs, followed by a Taser. Ali briefly fell to the ground but got back up and walked toward the trooper who used the Taser with the knife. Another trooper, Thomas Raymond, shot Ali four times in the torso with a rifle.

Ali fell to the ground, dead, within an arm’s reach of the trooper who deployed the Taser, according to the report. Officers recovered an open folding knife from the scene.

In the 18 months leading up to his death, Ali had also been arrested for sexual abuse, robbery, sexual misconduct, forcible touching and criminal mischief, according to the NYPD’s public information office.

Under New York’s justification law, a police officer may use deadly physical force when the officer reasonably believes it to be necessary to defend against the use of deadly physical force by another.

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“Given the law and the evidence, a prosecutor would not be able to disprove beyond a reasonable doubt at trial that the trooper’s use of deadly physical force against Mr. Ali was justified, and therefore (the Office of Special Investigation) determined that criminal charges would not be pursued in this matter,” the state attorney general’s office said in a release.

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This article originally published at Trooper cleared in 2024 shooting that killed New York City fugitive.