Firefighters killed by sniper after being lured to fire

What began as a rou­tine response to a brush fire on Can­field Moun­tain in Coeur d’Alene, Ida­ho, end­ed in tragedy when fire­fight­ers were ambushed by a gun­man. Two fire­fight­ers were killed and one crit­i­cal­ly injured on Sun­day after­noon after respond­ing to a sus­pi­cious fire near a pop­u­lar recre­ation area.

Audio record­ings cap­tured the chaos as a fire­fight­er urgent­ly radioed for law enforce­ment, stat­ing, “Everybody’s shot up here.” Fire crews arrived around 1:30 p.m. and were shot at approx­i­mate­ly 30 min­utes lat­er. Author­i­ties sus­pect the fire was delib­er­ate­ly set to lure emer­gency respon­ders into a dead­ly trap.

Koote­nai Coun­ty Sher­iff Robert Nor­ris con­firmed the deaths and report­ed that his offi­cers came under sniper fire dur­ing the response. The Inter­na­tion­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Fire Fight­ers (IAFF) also issued a state­ment, con­firm­ing two mem­bers were killed and a third remained in surgery. They called the attack a “heinous act of vio­lence

Lat­er, a SWAT team found the sus­pect­ed shoot­er dead on the moun­tain, with a firearm near­by. The FBI and Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty have joined the inves­ti­ga­tion to deter­mine whether this was a pre­med­i­tat­ed ambush using fire as bait.

The inci­dent has shocked local offi­cials and first respon­ders nation­wide. For­mer Boston Police Com­mis­sion­er Ed Davis described the sit­u­a­tion as resem­bling a bat­tle­field, with wound­ed fire­fight­ers pinned down behind their trucks. Ida­ho Gov­er­nor Brad Lit­tle con­demned the attack, call­ing it a “direct assault” on first respon­ders and ask­ing res­i­dents to pray for the vic­tims and their fam­i­lies