A now deceased man who police believe fatally shot two Idaho firefighters and wounded a third after luring them to a brush fire he allegedly set Sunday has been named.
A local law enforcement official identified him as 20-year-old Wess Roley, per The Associated Press.
The Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office issued a press release Sunday evening saying the SWAT team had found a dead man on Canfield Mountain just north of Coeur d’Alene, the area where the fire broke out. A firearm was found nearby. Authorities didn’t say how he died and have not revealed a motive for the shooting.
The man’s body was removed from where it was found because of the rapidly spreading fire.
“We do believe that the suspect started the fire, and we do believe that it was an ambush and it was intentional,” Kootenai County Sheriff Bob Norris said at a Sunday night news conference. “These firefighters did not have a chance.”
Who is Wess Roley?
Roley’s grandfather, Dale Roley, told CNN he had been working in the tree service industry while trying to figure out his career path.
“He wanted to be a fireman. He was doing tree work and he wanted to be a fireman in the forest,” Dale Roley said. “As far as I know, he was actually pursuing it.”
Wess Roley owned a shotgun and a long rifle, his grandfather said, but it’s unclear whether those firearms were used in the attack, per CNN.
Dale Roley said he spoke with his grandson weekly, but they hadn’t talked in the last month because Wess Roley had lost his phone.
“It wasn’t like he was a loner,” Dale Roley told CNN. “We had no reason to suspect that he would be involved in something like this.” He said he was holding out hope that his grandson wasn’t actually the shooter.
Court documents show his mother filed for divorce in September 2015, when her son was 10 years old. Roley’s father told a CNN reporter outside his home in Priest River, Idaho, that he wasn’t close with his son and hadn’t seen him since a family gathering last year, according to CNN.
Kootenai County Sheriff Bob Norris confirmed Monday that Wess Roley was the man who shot the three firefighters, per KXLY in nearby Spokane, Washington.
Investigators say local law enforcement has had five “very, very minor” interactions with Roley in northern Idaho. “We don’t show any criminal history for Roley,” Norris said.
Roley has lived in California, Idaho and Arizona.
At the news conference Monday, the sheriff gave reporters a picture from Roley’s Instagram account that had been recently removed. It shows Roley dressed in camouflage with his face painted and partially masked.
Investigators have not yet searched Roley’s vehicle, but say investigators believe he may have been living in the vehicle, according to KXLY. The sheriff’s office says it found a flint starter with Roley’s body that it believes was used to start the fire.
Norris told reporters Roley talked to firefighters before the shooting “and there was a discussion” that had something to do with where Roley’s vehicle was parked.
Sniper attack
Investigators say Roley intentionally set the fire to ambush the fire crew on Sunday and was perched in a sniper position, firing at the firefighters, according to the AP. They took cover behind firetrucks, but two died and a third was wounded during a barrage of gunfire over several hours, authorities said.
First responders made urgent calls for help on their radios at Canfield Mountain: “Everybody’s shot up here ... send law enforcement now,” according to one dispatch.
Norris said that law enforcement that descended on the mountain “exchanged gunfire,” with the man. They were later able to home in on a cellphone that had been in one place on the mountain since 3:16 p.m., he said. They found a man’s dead body there.