Roley's body was found near his weapon at the scene of a fire he started Sunday afternoon to lure unsuspecting smoke-eaters to the scene, a law-enforcement official told The Associated Press.

He ended up killing two responding firefighters and critically wounding a third, authorities said.

It is unclear whether Roley was eventually killed by a cop's bullet or took his own life, Kootenai County Sheriff Robert Norris told reporters at a press conference.

[...]

The chaos began around 2 p.m. on Canfield Mountain, just north of Coeur d'Alene, when smoke started pouring from the woods and first responders rushed to the scene — only to be met by a hail of gunfire coming from the trees.

Firefighters quickly realized they'd been lured into a psychotic trap and desperately called for backup, according to terrifying 911 calls they made from the scene.

"I'm pinned down," a firefighter said in the frantic call. "It's clear to me that this fire was set intentionally to draw us in.

"We need law enforcement up here immediately," he said. "We have another Coeur d'Alene firefighter down. ... We've got two unresponsive battalion chiefs down, multiple gunshot wounds, two Coeur d'Alene are down."

The fire was left to burn as reinforcements battled to root out the unseen gunman before the gunfire eventually stopped and Roley's body was tracked down in the trees using cellphone information.

Roley previously lived in Arizona but was in Idaho working in the tree-service business, his grandfather told CNN.

He had a tumultuous childhood marked by a messy divorce between his parents — which culminated with his father allegedly making threats that were eerily similar to the crime Roley carried out on Sunday, according to court papers from the bitter 2015 split.

"He threatened to sit outside my house with a sniper rifle or burn my house down," Roley's mother wrote in a filing of her son's father, according to CNN.

She also said Roley's father pushed her to the ground and "punched several holes in the walls."

The mother was granted a protective order barring the father from seeing her or her son — then 10 years old. But the father claimed, "I am not a danger to my son or anyone else" and said the accusations were a lie.

In another eerie twist, Roley had aspirations to become a firefighter, his granddad told the outlet.

"He wanted to be a fireman — he was doing tree work, and he wanted to be a fireman in the forest," his grandfather, Dale Roley, said. "As far as I know, he was actually pursuing it."

The grandfather expressed bafflement at the situation, saying Roley wasn't a "loner," and that he had a supportive family and group of friends.

"We had no reason to suspect that he would be involved in something like this," the grandfather said.

Neither of the two firefighters killed have been identified yet, while a third firefighter was left "fighting for his life" after he was struck by a bullet. He is now in stable condition.

A motivation behind the twisted attack remains unclear, but internet sleuths have identified a chilling possible connection to a decades-old incident involving the Coeur d'Alene Fire Department and neo-Nazis.

Sunday's incident happened 24 years to the day after a 2001 burning of an Aryan Nations compound in Hayden Lake — just 7 miles north of Coeur d'Alene — during a fire training operation.

The cabin and its compound had been sold to the department after the Aryan Nations' national leader, Richard Butler, filed for bankruptcy over a settlement involving the shooting of a Native American woman and her son — and the site was torched by the Coeur d'Alene Fire Department during a training exercise.

"I do not think it is a coincidence that on this date in 2001, firefighters in Coeur d'Alene burned down the Aryan Nation founder's compound in a training exercise after he lost the property in a federal bankruptcy sale. The tragic current events are unfolding nearby," one suspicious sleuth wrote in a post on X on Sunday.

So far no connection has been made between Roley and white supremacy movements.

A law enforcement official confirmed to USA TODAY that the suspect's name is Wess Roley.

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, Kootenai County Sheriff Bob Norris said at a news conference. [...]

Records show Wess Roley, 20, most recently lived in Phoenix, Arizona, 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.

Sherriff Bob Norris will be holding a press briefing at 2:00pm on June 30th at the Kootenai County Sheriff's Office North Campus - 2451 W. Dakota Ave, Hayden, ID 83835. Due to construction, please enter from Atlas Rd.

The purpose of the briefing is to deliver an update on the investigation currently underway following the Canfield Mountain incident.

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