WA Ping
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The ranger he killed never even made it out of her car. She had turned to block the road and he opened up with an automatic weapon.
Posted on 01/01/2012 2:32:04 PM PST by QT3.14
A U.S. Forest Service ranger at Mount Rainier National Park has been shot and killed, and the gunman is at large.
The ranger has been identifed as 34-year-old Margaret Anderson.
The shooting occurred at 10:11 a.m. near Longmire Ranger Station.
(Excerpt) Read more at king5.com ...
I live in one of those "western states." It has been abundantly clear to me that lawlessness is beyond what "authorities" can handle now, and has been for decades. Nor is it just in "western states." At best, the police show up and do some paperwork which is usable by insurance companies. The voice of experience. My own house was broken into twice about 20 years ago.
The really sad part is that decent people have not yet taken to "policing" their own neighborhoods.
Flowers attract bees. Overtime attracts LEOs...
It is against Federal law to block exit gates from federal lands.
“My house and land were beautiful and ethereal, but I was glad to move.”
That is a wonderfully melancholy sentence.
Was state land, not federal. And we had a deed agreement that the road would be gated and locked unless permission was granted by the DNR. Access was through my private land. The problem was that many of the people going back there were going there for illicit purposes. As we learned, nobody was going to enforce the law there, or patrol there.
Well, there is some meloncholy there. We loved living there until the last year — especially after my husband left for a new job out of state and I was there alone. It was spooky then.
The state brought prisoners in to log some of the land behind me and asked permission to use my parking lot for ther buses, their last words to my husband were to warn me, “Don’t let her serve cookies, or lemonade, to them. They are PRISONERS!” It got really spooky then. You wondered if any of them would come back after they were released. We moved shortly thereafter, and I was glad to be gone.
When I went back to visit a few years later and saw that my private trails were now marked with signs that said, “Watch for PANTHERS,” then I really was spooked, remembering the hours I’d speent wandering around back there with just my Schnauzer. There was a place where my cats and dogs would stop and refuse to go any further, but I marched bravely on while they yowled at me to stop.
WA Ping
.
The ranger he killed never even made it out of her car. She had turned to block the road and he opened up with an automatic weapon.
I’ve been monitoring multiple scanner frequencies with no luck yet. If I find anything I’ll post it. Also have been monitoring channels on radioreference.com. If anyone has a source, please ping or freepmail me.
.... the fanciest ranger station in the whole USA.
Maybe, maybe not!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2733730/posts
Mine was fancier because it was built as a home by a Bellevue doctor whose wife did not want to live there, adter all. It was operated as a religious retreat house for a while, and then we bought it. We put it back into tip top shape and had to sell to take a job in another state.
My husband’s company bought it and eventually sold it to 2 unrelated people who planned to subdivide the land. That did not work out, and the state swooped in and paid more than $100,000 than we got when we sold. The state wanted it because of the dee restriction on access to that 1000 acres of state forest land behind us. They tried (first) every which way to prove that we did not own the land at the gate, but they couldn’t change the boundaries enough to give them free access. By just buying the house, that whole argument became moot.
Amazing story - as these sorts of things often are!
I’ve been working as LE park Ranger this winter in AZ and I heard about this yesterday. I didn’t know Ranger Anderson but I know people who do. It’s pretty scary stuff. I had two visitors ask me recently if I really needed all that stuff on my belt, and why would you need law enforcement in parks. Just goes to show how little people understand about what LE rangers do. NPS LE rangers are the most assaulted LE group in the country, probably because a lot of people don’t respect our authority. Also criminals are drawn to the remoteness of National Parks. Someone said in an earlier post that the last ranger to be killed was in 2002. That’s not true, there were six rangers killed in 2009. In a lot of the parks we don’t operate like other law enforcement in the sense that we often have to patrol alone and backup can be very far away. The guy who did this was clearly unstable and the rangers involved might not have known how dangerous he was. Although if he was a suspect in another shooting, and it was already in the system, that information might have come back to the ranger who was following him, after blowing through the checkpoint, if he was able to run the plate on the vehicle. There were two rangers at the roadblock when the gunman started shooting. It was 90 minutes before any medical help could get to Anderson because this guy was still shooting, otherwise she might have lived. They found him dead this morning though. Probably killed himself.
At Mount Rainier around 10:20 a.m. Sunday, the gunman had sped past a checkpoint to make sure vehicles have tire chains, which are sometimes necessary in snowy conditions, Bacher said.
What The Heck?
My deepest sympathies. Hopefully a thorough and detailed review of how this was handled and maybe something can be figured out how to prevent something like this happening again. I’m reasonably sure existing policies and procedures were followed in this case (no reports so far that they weren’t) but maybe there is a procedural tweak than can be made going forward.
“There was a place where my cats and dogs would stop and refuse to go any further, but I marched bravely on while they yowled at me to stop.”
Silly human!
Yes, indeed!
Yes. "Margaret's Law", coming soon to a Fascist legislature near you...
From what I’ve heard from other rangers it was treated like we treat a gate runner; i.e. someone (usually a non english speaking tourist) goes through the employee lane at the entrance booth without paying to get into the park. Not usually something that causes increased caution, though I think a lot of us will now. It was a normal traffic stop (and yes there are safety procedures we are trained to do like any LE) but the guy got out of the car too fast and just started shooting with a shotgun before Anderson could do anything. She did call in to dispatch for assistance but no one could really get to her because the guy was still shooting at other responding officers. There probably wasn’t much that could have been done to prevent this, it’s just a terrible thing.
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