Officials identified the man who started a fire and then fatally shot two firefighters who came to put it out. His body was found on Canfield Mountain after a shootout.
Suspected shooter identified in ambush shootings of Idaho firefighters
The suspected shooter, 20-year-old Wes Roley, was found dead after allegedly starting a brush fire to lure firefighters in.
Officials have identified the sniper who was found dead after starting a fire and fatally shooting two responding firefighters.
The sniper was identified as Wess Roley, 20, Kootenai County Sheriff Bob Norris confirmed at a news conference Monday afternoon. Roley is accused of lighting a fire in the early afternoon on June 29 and then shooting two first responders who arrived to put it out.
A third firefighter was wounded in the shooting, Norris said at a news conference.
“This was a total ambush,” he told reporters. “These firefighters did not have a chance.”
The sniper’s body was later found on Canfield Mountain, a popular hiking and biking destination outside the city of Coeur d’Alene. It appears the suspect took his own life, Norris said.
The body and a firearm were found using cell phone location data, Norris said. It’s unclear how the suspect died, but Norris said he had engaged in a shootout with responding law enforcement officers.
Sheriff Norris shared new details at a June 30 news conference about the suspect’s life in the year leading up to the ambush outside Coeur d’Alene.
The suspect appeared to be living in his car and had five run-ins with local law enforcement that were “very, very minor in nature,” Norris said: “He cooperated on each one.”
His encounters with police mostly had to do with trespassing, Norris said. At one point, the suspect appeared to be living out of a restaurant, Norris said, and police had to ask him to leave. Law enforcement also performed at least one welfare check on the suspect.
He appeared to be living out of his car at the time of the shooting, said Norris, adding that it was full of materials. Investigators have not yet inventoried what was in the car which was pushed down an embankment to keep the suspect from fleeing.
Authorities have not found a manifesto and are still searching for a motive as well as what drew him to Coeur d’Alene.
“We know he was a transient here, we know he lived here for the better part of 2024, but in terms of how he got here, why he chose this place, we don’t know,” Norris told reporters. “Maybe we’ll find more once we do an inventory of the vehicle.”
The suspect “at one point wanted to be a firefighter,” according to Norris.
“We don’t know if there’s a nexus between that desire and what happened,” the sheriff told reporters.
Investigators found a flint fire starter on the suspect that they believe he used to start the fire. The blaze has grown to 26 acres in size, Norris said.
The suspect’s grandfather also told NBC News that his grandson wanted to be a firefighter.
The suspected shooter came from what Sheriff Norris described as an “arborist family.”
“We can’t find any evidence that he had survivalist training but from what we understand, he grew up in an arborist family and they climbed trees,” said Norris at a news conference at 2 p.m. PT on June 30.
“We did have multiple reports that he was shooting from a tree.”
Records show Roley, most recently, lived in Phoenix, but appears to have family in Idaho, about an hour’s drive from the location of the June 29 shooting.
The Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office has not released a possible motive in the shooting.
A relative of the suspect was shocked by the attack on firefighters. “He loved firefighters,” the suspect’s grandfather, Dale Roley, told NBC News. “It didn’t make sense that he was shooting firefighters. Maybe he got rejected or something.”
Dale Roley could not be immediately reached for comment by USA TODAY. The suspect briefly lived at his grandfather’s home in Oklahoma before moving to Idaho, according to NBC.
At 1:21 p.m. local time, an unidentified caller reported a fire on the east side of Canfield Mountain, Norris said. The caller is not believed to be the gunman.
Firefighters responded to the call, and at 2 p.m., firefighters broadcast that there were shots fired. Officers arrived at the scene and exchanged gunfire with the suspect, Norris said.
After the shooting, investigators discovered a cell phone signal on Canfield Mountain that had not moved since 3:16 p.m.
Authorities have not publicly identified the firefighters killed and injured in the attack.
One of the slain firefighters worked at Kootenai County Fire and Rescue, and the other worked for the Coeur d’Alene Fire Department. The wounded firefighter also works for the Coeur d’Alene department.
Contributing: John Bacon, Michael Loria, and Christopher Cann, USA TODAY
