Suspect Identified in Idaho Ambush of Firefighters that Killed Two Responders
The investigators are still processing the crime scene, and no “manifesto” or clue about motivation of shooter Wess Roley have been found.
Earlier this week, I reported on the Idaho sniper attack on firefighters near Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, in which a gunman ambushed fire crews responding to a deliberately set brush fire on Canfield Mountain.
The attack resulted in the deaths of two firefighters: Frank Harwood, Chief of Kootenai County Fire and Rescue, and John Morrison, Battalion Chief of the Coeur d’Alene Fire Department.
Coeur d’Alene Fire Department Dave Tysdal was recovering after two surgeries, according to Coeur d’Alene Fire Chief Tom Greif.
“This community lost two dedicated public servants,” Gabe Eckert, president of the Coeur d’Alene Firefighters’ union, said at a news conference. “These men were dedicated firefighters; they were dedicated to their community. These guys were hard workers who loved their families.”
The suspect has now been identified as Wess Roley, a 20-year-old man who had recently moved to Idaho and was living in his vehicle near the scene.
The suspect, identified as Wess Roley, 20, is believed to have climbed a tree and shot the firefighters below with a shotgun, the Kootenai County sheriff, Robert Norris, told reporters.
Law enforcement officers had exchanged fire with the gunman while the wildfire burned. Later, using cellphone signal data, officials found the body of the suspect on the mountain with a firearm nearby. The authorities said on Monday that they believed the suspect, who they think acted alone, died in an apparent suicide.
Mr. Roley’s grandfather, Dale Roley, said in an interview on Monday that his grandson had expressed interest in becoming a forest firefighter. He moved to Idaho last year and was working for a tree company, his grandfather said.
“He was just trying to figure his life out,” Mr. Roley said. “He seemed to be a little bit optimistic.”
The investigators are still processing the crime scene, and no “manifesto” or clue about motivation have been found. Roley had “very minor” encounters with law enforcement previously.
As the Nettleton Gulch Fire continued to burn on Monday, the sheriff said it will take days to fully process the area, but investigators have located Roley’s vehicle in an embankment near the scene. He said investigators have not yet been able to inventory the vehicle, which has “a lot of debris in there.” People who have seen the vehicle say it appears Roley was living in the vehicle, Norris said.
Norris said authorities have not found any writings that would indicate the suspect’s motive.
The suspect previously had five “very minor” encounters with law enforcement but had no criminal history, according to the sheriff. The interactions with officers “had to do more with trespassing, he was asked to leave and [was] cooperative,” Norris said. Other interactions included welfare checks reported by property owners about Roley’s vehicle, the sheriff said.
Investigation into Roley’s background reveal that his mother sought court-ordered protection from his father (who had threatened her with a sniper attack in 2015).
Documents filed in a Maricopa County, Arizona, court in 2015 show his mother, Heather Lynn Cuchiara, sought an order of protection against Roley’s father, Jason Roley, then her husband. She said that in October 2015, Jason Roley was arrested for criminal damage and assault after he was alleged to have gone to her home and threatened to commit suicide. Cuchiara said that things escalated and that Jason Roley punched holes in the walls, destroyed her cellphone and pushed her to the ground.
Cuchiara expressed concern that there were drugs and two guns in Jason Roley’s home, according to the documents.
In another alleged incident in November 2015, she said Jason Roley had told her that he would be “waiting outside with a sniper rifle,” according to the document. She asked that the order of protection include their son, Wess Roley, as a protected person. (He was 10 at the time.)
In terms of social media, an Idaho sheriff shared the last Instagram photo that was posted by Roley, who was wearing camouflage in the image.
Roley, 20, posted the image to his Instagram page right before luring firefighters to an intentionally set brush fire and opening fire, authorities believe.
The photo shows him in camouflage, wearing face paint, and with a photo from a Bjork album on his chest. The picture was set to the song “Hunter,” according to Rolling Stone. Roley’s Instagram page has since been deleted.
Idaho sh**ter Wess Roley posted a creepy picture of himself masked in camouflage with ammo, and lyrics in the background with the words “I’m going hunting” hours before his sh**ting spree – NYP pic.twitter.com/ggspvDJxlk
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) June 30, 2025
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Comments
deranged pos
thinking gods not going to be happy with him
Another white male Trump supporter goes unhinged. Nothing to see here. Move along,
lol, you for got /s
“Another?”
LOL. THIS kid is more of a JR clone than he is a Trump supporter.
He’s just like you. He hides in the shadows and snipes at people, and when confronted he’s done for.
Maybe you can take a page from the end of Roley’s story, eh?
Sorry, JR — but it looks like “Sarah Fields” plays for YOUR team.
Go light one of your estrogen candles in his honor.
I’m surprised LI didn’t run one of the other photos of this person in which he appears to be trans.
Yes. Bjork has a huge base of support with Trump supporters.
MSM et al sniper, sniper, sniper, sniper.
Actual firearm shotgun.
In defense of the media, it was the Sheriff who used the ‘sniper’ word multiple times. He even described LEOs coming under ‘sniper fire’ from the tree line when they arrived. Either none of those officer have ever heard a shotgun before or the Sheriff was freelancing when describing the situation as it unfolded.
Initial information should be taken as inaccurate, not on purpose, but by the nature of initial information. The Sheriff wasn’t there, and was going off the reports coming from people who were under gunfire.
It was a Dangerous Fully Semi-Automatic Assault Sniper Shotgun™.
A weapon of massmedia distraction.
It is possible he had 2 firearms and the second hasn’t yet been located.
Like father like son. Various forms of sanity are known to be inheritable.
Yup.
20 years old.
Out of the Wonder Years, into the cream of the Schizo Years.
“with a photo from a Bjork album on his chest”
He was setting up an insanity defense — only lunatics would admit to listening to Bjork.
Fireman. A fireman.
Usually, the nutty candidates are closet arsonists, not fireman-killers.
A tranny?
All the recent mass shooters have been.
Other photos of “him” appear to support the suspicion.
That was my impression, too.
Actually, a lot more of Roley’s social media has been found. There is a TikTok video where he is wearing women’s eye makeup and is presenting as a female. In the background is a snippet of a “My Little Pony” video, which he says he is obsessed with.
He also calls himself a “furry,” and a conservative investigative journalist says that he was so infuriated with his MAGA mother and stepfather that they had to get a no-contact order against him.
Her name is Sarah Fields. Don’t know if her information has been verified or not, but the kid was definitely a victim/follower/perpetrator of the current transgender madness being propagated by the radical/mainstream Democrat left, particularly through their control of our public schools, which gives them access to almost everyone’s children starting in kindergarten.
I can’t find any of this information. You have links to some of it?
Strange how that works—not being able to find background material. Guarantee you if he was an NRA member, it would have been out there in half an hour.
It is a “tell”; if there is no background on the guy, it is because there is something fishy.
I remain unconvinced that he was the only shooter, or that his primary weapon was a shotgun. Talked to a guy, the next day, who was there. He is a member of CdA Search and Rescue, and was pinned down for several hours. He’s also a military veteran with several tours to Afghanistan under his belt. He wasn’t hearing shotgun blasts, but rather AR/AK caliber rifles. Later, maybe they were shooting at the suspect, but not early on. And was hearing shots from various directions.
A shotgun is a really shitty weapon to use in that situation. Maybe in the original ambush, sure. But their effectiveness drops off sharply with distance, in regards to humans. And climbing a tree just makes the problem worse, by increasing the distance of the shots. The guy I talked to said that he had heard that the shooter had an AR chambered in .458 SOCOM, which can penetrate many ballistic vests. And that would explain why it took so long to neutralize him – even SWAT has to tread carefully around guns like that, while a shotgun in that environment is unlikely to kill someone wearing standard police body armor.
The environment in that area consists primarily of tall coniferous trees(Ponderosa Pine, Spruce, Fir). Because of their size, they aren’t packed that closely together. And they tend to lose their lower limbs, as they grow, thanks to the shade from equally tall trees next to them. And then underbrush between them. They evolved to survive periodic fires of that underbrush. They have thick bark, and that’s the best time for their seeds to sprout. The big fires, that are hard to control, are when the tops of these trees catch fire (Crown Fires), hence why small, low level, fires are so ruthlessly shut down, esp this close to the multimillion dollar homes around CdA. Turns out that we live across the MT border, almost due east, in essentially the same forest.