Reports: Driver's license of fugitive ex-cop accused in slayings is found with body in burned cabin
A manhunt for a former Los Angeles police officer that has been ongoing for over a week apparently ended Tuesday night in a fiery blaze after authorities began using a special armored vehicle to peel off the walls of a mountainside cabin following a gun battle, the deployment of tear gas and multiple demands that a man believed to be Christopher Jordan Dorner surrender.
A body was found in the charred remains of the cabin, which is located near Big Bear, and law enforcement sources say Dorner’s wallet and driver’s license were inside, according to the Associated Press and L.A. Now page of the Los Angeles Times.
The articles rely on unidentified sources, but a spokeswoman for the San Bernardino County sheriff’s department says ‘‘We have reason to believe that it is him,’’ the AP reports.
A San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputy died of wounds sustained during a gun battle in which hundreds of rounds were fired, and another injured officer was also airlifted out for medical treatment. Dorner, 33, was criminally charged Monday in the earlier murder of a Riverside, Calif., police officer and the attempted murder of other police officers, reported KTNV.
Dorner, for whom a $1 million reward had been offered, was also the prime suspect in the slayings of the daughter of a retired Los Angeles police captain and her fiance. Dorner had reportedly posted a manifesto on Facebook, since taken down, in which he blamed the ex-captain, Randall Quan and others involved in hearings related to his termination from his LAPD job and threatened “deadly consequences” to clear his name, after, he said, exhausting all legal remedies. The police chief has promised to reinvestigate Dorner’s job termination, which Dorner, who was black, said in the Facebook posting resulted from his complaint to the LAPD of “a Caucasian officer kicking a mentally ill man.” An earlier ABAJournal.com post provides further details and links to a television station’s posting of the manifesto.
As the walls of the cabin in which Dorner was believed to be holed up were coming down Tuesday, police reportedly heard a shot and then flames began to spread. Other shots, believed to have resulted from the fire, then rang out.
Randall Quan was the attorney representing Dorner at his LAPD termination hearing, and Dorner blamed Quan for the bad outcome, contending that he had not been fairly treated there, by Quan and others, an earlier L.A. Now article explains.
“Your lack of ethics and conspiring to wrong a just individual are over,” the manifesto stated. “Suppressing the truth will lead to deadly consequences for you and your family. There will be an element of surprise where you work, eat and sleep.”
Additional coverage:
Mercury News: “Christopher Dorner standoff: Cops urge burning of cabin (vulgar language)”
