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

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

Loewe, 47, had a criminal record that 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 tried to drive from a second-floor parking lot at Pearlridge Center Phase III to escape police officers from the Wahiawa and Pearl City districts who reported seeing him taking items from a 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 said the 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 and attempted to drive away.

In the process, one police officer was dragged by the fleeing car and 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 investigate when an officer is involved in a shooting.

According to police Lt. Keith Lima, who heads the 60-detective Burglary/Theft Detail in HPD's District 3, which includes Pearlridge, the suspect was under surveillance for alleged unauthorized entry into a motor vehicle, a class C felony that carries a sentence of up to five years imprisonment and a $5,000 fine.

"Our crime reduction units were targeting people who break into cars," Lima said. "They were doing surveillance of the Pearlridge area."

The crime has become a problem in recent years, particularly in areas that have high shopping mall traffic, said HPD spokesman Capt. Frank Fujii.

However, the figures have decreased lately due to stepped-up police efforts and more vigilance on the part of the community, Fujii said.

Lima's District 3 unauthorized vehicle entry statistics for the four months leading up to March illustrate that point when compared to the same four months a year ago.

In November and December 2007 and January and February of this year, the total number of unauthorized vehicle entry violations totaled 496, he said. That's down from 684 a year ago.