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| Law enforcement officials respond after Christopher Dorner, the fugitive ex-Los Angeles cop sought in three killings, engaged in a shootout with authorities that wounded two officers in the San Bernardino Mountains near Big Bear Lake, Calif., Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2013. |
BIG BEAR, Calif.
(AP) -- A man police believe to be the fugitive ex-Los Angeles
officer wanted in three killings was barricaded inside a burning cabin
Tuesday after a shootout in a California mountain town Tuesday that left
one deputy dead and another wounded.
The developments raised the possibility that the nearly week-old hunt for America's most wanted man might be coming to an end.
The
cabin was on fire and smoke was coming from the structure in the late
afternoon after police surrounded it in the snow-covered woods of Big
Bear, a resort town about 80 miles east of Los Angeles.
Authorities
have focused their hunt for Christopher Dorner there since they said he
launched a campaign to exact revenge against the Los Angeles Police
Department for his firing.
Authorities say
Dorner threatened to bring "warfare" to LAPD officers and their
families, spreading fear and setting off a search for him across three
states and Mexico.
"Enough is enough. It's
time for you to turn yourself in. It's time to stop the bloodshed," LAPD
Cmdr. Andrew Smith said earlier in the day at a news conference held
outside police headquarters in Los Angeles, a starkly different
atmosphere than last week when officials briefed the news media under
tight security with Dorner on the loose.
If
the man inside the cabin does prove to be Dorner, it will both lower
tensions among the more than 40 targets police say he listed in an
online rant. It would also raise them for law enforcement officers who
are engaged in a standoff with a former Navy reservist who has warned
that he knows their tactics as well as they do.
Until Tuesday, authorities didn't know whether he was still near Big Bear, where they found his burned-out pickup last week.
Around
12:20 p.m. Tuesday, deputies got a report of a stolen vehicle,
authorities said. The location was directly across the street from where
law enforcement set up their command post on Thursday and not far from
where Dorner's burned-out pickup was abandoned.
The
people whose vehicle was stolen described the suspect as looking
similar to Dorner. When authorities found the vehicle, the suspect ran
into the forest and barricaded himself inside a cabin.
U.S.
Forest Service spokesman John Miller said the first exchange of gunfire
involved state Fish and Wildlife wardens at 12:42 p.m., and then there
was a second exchange with San Bernardino County sheriff's deputies, two
of whom were shot.
Police say Dorner began
his run on Feb. 6 after they connected the slayings of a former police
captain's daughter and her fiance with an angry Facebook rant they said
he posted. Threats against the LAPD led officials to assign officers to
protect officers and their families.
Within
hours of the release of photos of the 6-foot, 270-pounder described as
armed and "extremely dangerous," police say, Dorner unsuccessfully tried
to steal a boat in San Diego to flee to Mexico and then ambushed police
in Riverside County, shooting three and killing one.
Jumpy
officers guarding one of the targets named in the rant in Torrance on
Thursday shot and injured two women delivering newspapers because they
mistook their pickup truck for Dorner's.
Police found charred weapons and camping gear inside the truck in Big Bear.
Helicopters
using heat-seeking technology searched the forest from above while
scores of officers, some
using bloodhounds, scoured the ground and
checked hundreds of vacation cabins - many vacant this time of year - in
the area.
A snowstorm hindered the search and
may have helped cover his tracks, though authorities were hopeful he
would leave fresh footprints if hiding in the wilderness.
Dorner's
anger with the department dated back at least five years, when he was
fired for filing a false report accusing his training officer of kicking
a mentally ill suspect. Dorner, who is black, claimed in the rant that
he was the subject of racism by the department and fired for doing the
right thing.
He said he would get even with those who wronged him as part of his plan to reclaim his good name.
"You're
going to see what a whistleblower can do when you take everything from
him especially his NAME!!!" the rant said. "You have awoken a sleeping
giant."
Chief Charlie Beck, who initially
dismissed the allegations in the rant, said he would reopen the
investigation into his firing - not to appease the ex-officer, but to
restore confidence in the black community, which long had a fractured
relationship with police that has improved in recent years.
One
of the targets listed in the manifesto was former LAPD Capt. Randal
Quan, who represented Dorner before the disciplinary board. Dorner
claimed he put the interests of the department above his.
The
first victims were Quan's daughter, Monica Quan, 28, a college
basketball coach, and her fiance, Keith Lawrence, 27. They were shot
multiple times in their car in a parking garage near their condo.
Dorner
served in the Navy, earning a rifle marksman ribbon and pistol expert
medal. He was assigned to a naval undersea warfare unit and various
aviation training units, according to military records. He took leave
from the LAPD for a six-month deployment to Bahrain in 2006 and 2007.
