On Sunday, a tragic ambush in Idaho targeted firefighters, coinciding with the anniversary of a 2001 event where a notorious neo-Nazi compound was burned by the local fire department during a training exercise.
Firefighters were attacked after someone intentionally ignited a fire on Canfield Mountain close to Coeur d’Alene, resulting in the deaths of two firefighters and critically wounding a third. The perpetrator was discovered deceased near his weapon.
Online investigators have noted that this tragic event took place exactly 24 years after the Aryan Nations group’s former headquarters in Hayden Lake, merely 7 miles away from Coeur d’Alene, was purposefully set ablaze.
Aryan Nation leader Richard Butler was forced to sell the site in a bankruptcy sale after being ordered to pay a Native American woman $6.3 million in 2001 as part of a lawsuit brought by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The hate group’s security guards had opened fire at the woman, Victoria Keenan, when she stopped outside the building with her son.
Keenan bought the dilapidated compound for $95,000 and sold it to a local philanthropist, who let the local Coeur d’Alene fire department burn it down as part of a training exercise.
Conspiracy theorists and locals are now questioning whether Sunday’s incident may have been a revenge attack for the fire department’s burning down of the compound.
Eerie pictures taken during the two-day fire-training exercise June 28 and 29, 2001, show the former headquarters of the neo-Nazi group going up in flames.
“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,” a user wrote in a post on X on Sunday.
A second person added on X that the attack could be “Richard Butler ppl laying stake. His compound was close by.”
A third X user wrote, “Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, is the home of the Aryan nation.
“Richard Butler made his base there, and despite being pushed out, they have returned in the last few years.”
So far, there is no indication that Sunday’s sniper had any political motivations or ties to neo-Nazi groups.
The Aryan Nations have been defunct since 2001, with no recent verified activity tied to the group after the death of Butler in 2004 at the age of 86.
The site of the compound was later converted into a park dedicated to peace, while the lawsuit effectively bankrupted the Aryan Nations and brought about its demise, as it splintered into factions.
