Man shot Idaho firefighters who had asked him to move vehicle, sheriff says
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COEUR D’ALENE, Idaho — A man who started a wildfire and then fatally shot two firefighters and wounded another in northern Idaho was a 20-year-old transient who attacked the first responders after they asked him to move his vehicle, a sheriff said Monday.
Kootenai County Sheriff Bob Norris offered new details about the Sunday confrontation at Canfield Mountain, just north of Coeur d’Alene, a popular recreation area. He said Wess Roley was living out of his vehicle, had once aspired to be a firefighter and had only a handful of minor contacts with area police.
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“We have not been able to find a manifesto,” the sheriff said, adding a motive was still unknown.
Norris said families of the victims are “in shock — absolutely. They’re in shock and they’re still processing it.”
2 firefighters killed, 3rd in critical condition
Battalion Chief Frank Harwood, 42, who had been with the county fire department for 17 years, was killed, Kootenai County Fire and Rescue Chief Christopher Way said during a news conference Monday. Harwood was married and had two children, and he also was a veteran of the Army National Guard.
Coeur d’Alene Fire Department Battalion Chief John Morrison, 52, was also killed after working with the department for 28 years.
Coeur d’Alene Fire Department Fire Engineer David Tysdal, 47, sustained gunshot wounds and was in critical condition. Authorities said he had two successful surgeries.
After the shooting, local law enforcement agencies have offered to go on every call that the fire department goes on, according to Way.
“I don’t know that we’re ever going to be able to guarantee people’s peace of mind, at least for a while after an incident like this,” he said. “But we are taking every measure we can to ensure safety of our responders.”
Roley had set a fire using flint, and the firefighters who rushed to the scene instead found themselves under fire. They took cover behind fire trucks.
“There was an interaction with the firefighters,” Norris said. “It has something to do with his vehicle being parked where it was.”
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Roley had ties to California, Arizona as well
Roley later killed himself, the sheriff said.
He had ties to California and Arizona and was living in Idaho “for the better part of 2024,” Norris said. “But as far as when he got here, why he was here, why he chose this place — I don’t know.”
Two helicopters converged on the area Sunday, armed with snipers ready to take out the suspect if needed, while the FBI used his cellphone data to track him and the sheriff ordered residents to shelter in place. They eventually found Roley dead in the mountains, his firearm beside him.
Roley lived with T.J. Franks Jr. for about six months in Sandpoint, Idaho, while working for a tree service, Franks said on Monday. Franks had cameras in his apartment that caught Roley throwing gang signs at them one day, which worried Franks to the point that he called police.
“I didn’t know what to really think about it,” Franks said. “I just called the cops and had them talk to him.”
The landlord also called Franks one morning because neighbours reported that Roley’s vehicle had been left running for about 12 hours. Franks said Roley was asleep in his room and said he forgot about the vehicle.
Franks said Roley “started acting a little weird” and at one point shaved his long hair off completely.
“We just kind of noticed him starting to decline or kind of go downhill,” he said.
Swift outpouring of support
Outpouring of support for the victims was swift in Coeur d’Alene, a city of 55,000 residents near the border with Washington.
Hours after the shooting, people gathered along Interstate 90 holding American flags to pay their respects as the two fallen firefighters’ bodies were taken to the medical examiner’s office in Spokane, Wash., about 56 km from Coeur d’Alene.
Gov. Brad Little ordered U.S. and Idaho state flags to be lowered to half-mast to honour the firefighters until the day after their memorial service.
“All our public safety officers, especially our firefighters, bravely confront danger on a daily basis but we have never seen a heinous act of violence like this on our firefighters before,” he said in a statement. “This is not Idaho. This indescribable loss is felt deeply by all those in the firefighting community and beyond.”
Though the shelter-in-place order was lifted, the sheriff’s office cautioned residents to be prepared because the fire was still burning. The Idaho Department of Lands said it had burned about 10.5 hectares.
Way described the fire on Monday as “reasonably contained,” saying that respondents had “stopped significant forward progress.”
Fire is always a concern for the region, said Bruce Deming, whose property abuts the trail system. When he noticed smoke on the ridge Sunday afternoon, he wondered why no firefighting helicopters were responding.
When a friend texted to tell him about the shooting, he realized why he wasn’t seeing aircraft: “Because they’re concerned about being shot at,” he said.
— Associated Press journalists Ed White in Detroit and Hallie Golden and Martha Bellisle in Seattle contributed to this report.
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