During a Sunday night press conference, Kootenai County Sheriff Bob Norris indicated that law enforcement believes the shooter started the fire on Canfield Mountain in Idaho as part of “an ambush.”
Norris stressed that the fire “was intentional.”
He explained how law enforcement detected “cell phone activation” at a certain spot on the mountain around 3:16 p.m. He said, “We honed in on that cell phone and saw that there was a male who appeared to be deceased with a weapon nearby.”
He said, “Based on the preliminary information, we believe that was the only shooter who was on that mountain at that time.” Norris said the assessment is “based on trajectory” and “based on the type of weapons that this individual had.”
He explained that his police department had two helicopters searching the mountain Sunday afternoon and that both helicopters had “snipers in them.” Norris said, “If they had an opportunity to take a shot, then we wanted them to take that shot.”
Two firefighters lost their lives in Sunday’s attack, but Norris made clear their identities would not be released “at this time.”
