Sheriff Announces Conclusion to Horrific Firefighter Ambush
The man police believe laid an ambush for Idaho firefighters on Sunday is dead.
The Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office announced that the body of a man was found on Canfield Mountain near Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, according to ABC.
The man had a firearm near his body.
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Two firefighters were killed and another was critically wounded after they responded to a brush fire, Kootenai County Sheriff Robert Norris said.
“This was a total ambush,” Norris said. “These firefighters did not have a chance.”
The initial report of a fire came in at 1:21 p.m. Sunday. By 2 p.m., firefighters reported coming under fire, triggering a response that grew to about 300 law enforcement personnel — some of whom exchanged shots with the gunman.
The standoff ended at about 7:40 p.m. when officials learned the gunman was dead. The shelter-in-place order for the area has been lifted.
Norris, who said he knows of no motive for the attack, stated it was not certain if the man shot himself, according to NBC.
“Based on the preliminary information, we believe that was the only shooter up on that mountain at that time,” Norris said. “There is no threat to the community at this time.”
Norris said the shooter was tracked by a cellphone signal.
“We had a cell phone activation that was in the same spot since about 3:16 [p.m.], and that it was in the same area,” he said. “And we honed in on that cellphone, and we saw that there was a male, appeared to be deceased, with a weapon nearby.”
Norris said federal authorities supplied the technology that tracked the signal.
“There are some helicopters that had some really good technology that were able to pinpoint where that cellphone activity was. So yeah, there was our federal partners assisting us in this situation,” he said.
Norris said snipers were ready if needed.
“We had two helicopters that were up, and we had snipers in them. So, if they had an opportunity to take a shot, then we wanted them to take that shot,” he said.
Shawn Turner, a former U.S. national intelligence communications director, said now the investigation will try to determine why the attack took place, according to CNN.
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Investigators will seek to learn “whether or not there was some sort of tension — some sort of strife, conflict between local law enforcement and this individual,” Turner said. Officials will then look at the individual’s wider political and societal views.
Turner said the ambush was “a fairly complex attack where [the shooter] intended to harm more people than he did.”
This article originally appeared on The Western Journal, and is reposted with permission.
