The 20-year-old man suspected of fatally shooting two veteran Idaho firefighters and wounding a third was a transient who attacked after they asked him to move the vehicle he lived in, authorities said late Monday.
Wess Roley’s potential motives still eluded investigators on Tuesday, as he did not appear to leave behind a manifesto, and any prior police contact consisted of a handful of interactions that were “very, very minor in nature,” Kootenai County Sheriff Robert Norris said at a briefing.
Roley had once aspired to be a firefighter himself, a former roommate told police, but then had seemed to unravel. Before that, Roley had exhibited “Nazi tendencies” in school, sketching swastikas in a notebook, and was “obsessed with guns,” three former classmates of Roley’s told USA Today.
Norris said Roley had used a flint to spark the fire on Canfield Mountain, a popular recreation area just north of Coeur d’Alene, then killed himself after an hours-long standoff with responders.
“There was an interaction with the firefighters,” Norris said. “It has something to do with his vehicle being parked where it was.”
Firefighters dove behind their rigs when Roley started shooting, but bullets took the lives of Kootenai County Fire Battalion Chief Frank Harwood, 42, and Coeur d’Alene Fire Department Battalion Chief John Morrison, 52. Coeur d’Alene Fire Department Engineer David Tysdal, 47, was critically wounded and remained hospitalized after two successful surgeries, authorities said.
Harwood, a married father of two, had been with the county fire department for 17 years and was an Army National Guard veteran, while Morrison had been with the Coeur d’Alene department for 28 years.
Community members lined Interstate 90 on Sunday to witness the procession carrying the firefighters’ bodies to the medical examiner’s office in Spokane, Wash. On Monday, flags were lowered to half-staff on orders of Gov. Brad Little, where they will remain until the day after the firefighters’ as-yet-unscheduled memorial services.
“The entire State of Idaho grieves the profound loss of the firefighters killed in the shocking ambush in North Idaho,” Little said in a statement. “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. This indescribable loss is felt deeply by all those in the firefighting community and beyond.”
In the wake of the shooting, authorities said law enforcement will now accompany firefighters to even the most routine-sounding calls.
With News Wire Services
