What we know about Idaho firefighters, sniper who ambushed them
Kootenai County Fire and Rescue Chief Frank Harwood and Coeur d'Alene Fire Department Battalion Chief John Morrison were killed in the June 29 shooting, authorities said. Coeur d'Alene Fire Department Dave Tysdal is recovering from his injuries after two surgeries, according to Coeur d'Alene Fire Chief Tom Greif.
"This community lost two dedicated public servants," Gabe Eckert, president of the Coeur d'Alene Firefighters' union, said at a news conference Monday. "These men were dedicated firefighters; they were dedicated to their community. These guys were hard workers who loved their families."
Officials identified the suspect, who is also deceased in an apparent suicide, as 20-year-old Wess Roley. Roley's body was discovered after a six-hour manhunt that drew a response of hundreds of law enforcement officials from local, state and federal agencies.
Here's what we know:
The firefighters responded to a call at about 1:21 p.m. on June 29 that there was a fire on the east side of Canfield Mountain near Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, a city of about 57,000 residents in the northwest part of the state.
At 2 p.m., firefighters broadcast there were shots fired, officials said. The shots prompted a response from hundreds of law enforcement officers, with those on the scene exchanging gunfire with the suspect, Kootenai County Sheriff Bob Norris said.
'This was a total ambush," Norris said. "These firefighters did not have a chance."
Investigators used cell phone data to locate a signal that hadn't moved since about 3:16 p.m. and discovered the body of the suspect, authorities announced just after 7:40 p.m.
As the manhunt unfolded, the brush fire grew unchecked until it was deemed safe for firefighters to access, the Idaho Department of Lands said. As of the evening of June 30, it was being held at about 26 acres with no evacuations or structures at risk, the department said in an update.
The suspect, a transient with a history of "minor" run-ins with police, appeared to be living out of his car at the time of the shooting, Norris said. Investigators are still looking into a possible motive and what brought Roley to Coeur d'Alene, he said.
Past encounters with law enforcement were mostly about alleged trespassing, officials said. He came from an 'arborist family" and appeared to have fired from up a tree, Norris said.
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.
Former classmates remembered Roley in interviews with USA TODAY as having "Nazi tendencies" and "obsessed with guns."
Read more.
The firefighters killed in the attack were remembered as "selfless public servants."
Harwood, 42, had been with the Kootenai agency for 17 years, according to Kootenai County Fire and Rescue Chief Christopher Way. He was married with two children.
"He did an amazing job," Way said. "This loss is felt by so many."
Morrison, 52, had been with the Coeur d'Alene department since 1996, according to Coeur d'Alene Fire Chief Tom Greif.
Eckert, of the firefighters' union, shared a recent memory with Morrison of smoking cigars on a backyard patio.
"We talked about being better fathers, we talked about being better leaders, and we talked about being better firefighters," Eckert said. "I'm so incredibly grateful that that gets to be my last memory with him."
Contributing: John Bacon, Michael Loria, Christopher Cann, N'dea Yancey-Bragg, Josh Meyer and Will Carless, USA TODAY
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What we know about slain Idaho firefighters, sniper suspect Wess Roley
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Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. On Sunday, 20-year-old Wess Roley, it's alleged, started a wildfire near Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, then lay in wait for firefighters to respond. When they did, he apparently opened fire, killing Kootenai County Fire and Rescue Chief Frank Harwood and Coeur d'Alene Fire Department Battalion Chief John Morrison. He also critically wounded Coeur d'Alene Fire Department engineer David Tysdal. Roley was found dead, with a shotgun by his side, later that day. The attack dominated headlines, becoming a global story and immediately sparking political tribal skirmishes on social media. The enormous interest makes sense. It's a horrible tragedy. We expect this kind of thing when it comes to police officers or other professionals for whom violence is a tool of the trade. 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While tweaked somewhat to deal with a domestic incident (such as dealing with distraught parents during a school shooting), the Venn diagram for the two trainings was almost a circle. Indeed, the idea that responders to shooting incidents, whether armed or unarmed, should undergo TCCC training is an element of the 2013 Hartford Consensus. This was a kind of national throwing up of the hands that accepted that shootings could not be stopped, and shifted focus to a more effective response, recommending that responders adopt a tripartite mission when time is of the essence: 1) Stop the killing, 2) stop the dying, and 3) save as many as you can. The Hartford Consensus contains elements of a variety of mass casualty programs, including Federal Emergency Management Agency, emergency medical services protocols, advanced trauma life support, Stop the Bleed, and Tactical Emergency Casualty Care, the civilian equivalent of TCCC. 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Instead, I relied on the 'hard operators' in my team to keep me safe, knowing that if they fell, I had at least a means of holing up and shooting it out with the enemy until the quick reaction force could extract me. Much of the training I received before deploying to Iraq centered on how I could move and integrate with hard operators in my team, staying out of their way until I was needed. This instruction reflects the reality of rising levels of violence directed at firefighters. There are the instances when we have to respond to active shooter incidents, but also, there are the times people shoot at or assault us, as happened in Coeur d'Alene. In 2023 Drexel University's Center for Firefighter Injury Research and Safety Trends noted a 69 percent increase in assaults on firefighters from 2021 to 2022 (from 350 to 593). Many of these incidents occur during medical calls, rather than fire responses. And this number may be an undercount, as FIRST looked only at those incidents reported in the media. I can personally attest that in the hypermasculine and stoic culture of the fire service, a minor assault that didn't result in injury or generate media attention could easily go unremarked on. Indeed, in the District of Columbia in 2023, the firefighters union complained of an increase in assaults against firefighters, describing the attacks as occurring 'fairly often.' The problem isn't confined to the United States. Three-quarters of German firefighters experienced some form of public violence during a response as of February of this year. A recent assault on a Canadian firefighter prompted changes to the criminal code to include firefighters and emergency medical services, and a small town in British Columbia authorized 15,000 Canadian dollars to purchase body armor for firefighters after an attack. While the impact of warfare is obviously a separate scenario, I would be remiss not to note the terrible toll Russia's invasion of Ukraine is taking on European firefighters. Numbers from the U.K. show that the figures are even worse for EMS responders, with whom firefighters usually work closely. The critical question is: why? The answer is complex, evolving, and desperately in need of attention. Spiraling distrust of institutions is an obvious culprit, and the tight bond between fire and police services, who often share resources, means that tensions in the rapport between the public and police are reflected on anyone showing up to a crisis with a uniform on. Then there's the increase in mental health–related calls, which frequently put firefighters in situations in which they are dealing with potentially unstable and reactive individuals like Roley, with the corresponding potential for violent outcomes. But the bottom line is that we don't know why this is happening, only that it is. The American fire service is largely dependent on volunteers and is already under increasing stress from climate change, a decline in volunteerism, and shifting technological demands. Violence against firefighters will only make this worse and may affect the decisionmaking of the people on which the entire system depends. I'm not getting paid for this—why am I risking my life? is a question Americans contemplating volunteering may be forgiven for asking. Given the trends, it's a question for which we owe them an answer. The time for formal, funded, and organized study of the reasons for violence against crisis responders is now.