After days on the run, and a manhunt that included L.A. cops mistakenly shooting at a vehicle that looked like the one driven by the suspect, the L.A. Times is reporting that fugitive ex-cop Christopher Dorner was in an alleged shoot-out with Big Bear officers this afternoon.
The shooting occurred after Dorner burglarized a home, tied up a couple and stole a white pickup truck, sources said. San Bernardino County sheriff’s spokeswoman Jodi Miller confirmed deputies responded to a vehicle theft about 12:20 p.m., and the resident who reported the theft said the suspect matched Dorner’s description.
The U.S. Forest Service confirms there was an exchange of gunfire between officers on foot and the suspect, in the Santa Ana River drainage, north of State Highway 38 and south of Big Bear Valley. At least one officer of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife was involved, said John Miller, San Bernardino National Forest spokesman. That officer is not believed to be injured.
Dorner’s status was not immediately known as the gunfight continued.
The most recent updates claim that Dorner is inside a cabin, surrounded by police. More updates to come.
UPDATE 2:25 PM: More details from the L.A. Times regarding Dorner’s chase with authorities, and how he is currently in a cabin surrounded by police.
Dorner crashed the truck during the ensuing chase and exchanged gunfire with the officers as he fled into another cabin, where he was quickly surrounded by San Bernardino Sheriff’s deputies. One deputy was hit as Dorner fired out of the cabin and then a second was wounded when Dorner exited the back of the cabin, deployed a smoke bomb and opened fire again in an apparent attempt to flee. Dorner was driven back inside the cabin, where it appears he is pinned down, the source said.
The extent of the deputies’ injuries is unknown.
UPDATE 3:25 PM: From the L.A. Times twitter feed:
UPDATE 3:45 PM: One of the deputies who was shot during the shootout with Dorner has died from his wounds.
UPDATE 4:25 PM:
UPDATE 5:50 PM: From the L.A. Times:
According to a law enforcement source, police had broken down windows, pumped in tear gas and blasted a loud speaker urging Dorner to give up. When they got no response, police deployed a vehicle to rip down the walls of cabin “one by one, like peeling an onion,” one law enforcement official said.
By the time they got to the last wall, authorities heard a single gunshot, the source said. Then flames began to spread through the structure. Then, they heard gunshots likely set off by the fire.
Dorner’s body has not been found.
UPDATE 6:05 PM:
Well, that’s too bad, I was hoping he would terrify the police for the next few months.
I know plenty of people who the police have terrorized and traumatized, frankly, it was hilarious and entertaining watching them shake in their boots for once.
Oh well. They’ll probably just go back to using their boots to stomp on faces, forever.
[comment pulled due to general dickishness.]
Looks like Dorner got the full Waco treatment. Don’t ya love how CNN and the other mainstream lapdog news is no longer showing footage of major events like this standoff in real time?
Gotta disagree with you there, fidelity. I, uh, happen to live in LA. Keep in mind that it wasn’t just that Dorner was a threat to cops, but that cops were a threat to everyday citizens. The terrorizing and the traumatizing by the police increased during this event. They shot two newspaper delivery women, and shot at one man who was on his way to go surfing. I don’t like it when cops are even more trigger-itchy than usual.
@ROM – Then why the hell are you commenting on the Portland Mercury?
Yeah, I agree with you, it’s no good when cops are *MORE* trigger happy than usual. Though, the counter-balance of this is that police were actually afraid of something, that they were taking action against past indiscretions, and they were exposed (more than usual) for exercising self-protection even at the expense of regular folks.
Cops have always, at least since the Drug War, been a threat to every day people doing their every day things. Just ask a Black person. Dorner didn’t change that, nor did he escalate it, he (and by ‘he’ I mean ‘the cops’) just highlighted it. Those women could have just as easily been shot by cops for any other reason – and, as usual, the police who shot innocent civilians without provocation will be rewarded with vacation time, and probably receive admiration from their cop-buddies.
ROM, your chances of receiving an injustice (including a gun shot) by a person with a badge is no less today or tomorrow. Your chance to receive an injustice, with or without people like Dorner, will probably increase in the future.
Piss off, Damosa. I highly doubt that the Sherriff’s deputy shot and killed yesterday was some kind of “pig” that deserved to be taken out. Troll. Now post your obligatory “when and where” response.
@pdxM8 – “I highly doubt”
And what’s your reasoning behind that? Do you have any evidence or a link you can share? Or, do you simply assume all police are always good people?
Personally, I come from a Law Enforcement family, my mom, dad, uncles and aunts – from patrol officers to policy makers. I considered joining up for a long time, but then I smoked pot and realized the hypocrisy of modern policing. For every “bad cop” on the force, there’s THE ENTIRE REST OF THE FORCE who enables their awful behavior by allowing it and doing absolutely nothing to stop it. I see it in my own family: joking about the racist cop who everyone knows is a bad guy, and yet my family members allow it in order to preserve their own career, at the expense of the community they are “protecting.” Even Dorner discussed this enabling of corruption in his crazy-ass manifesto at length: how the entire police force did not target the known wrong-doers and “bad cops”, but the whistleblower. This “blue-line” mentality was so disturbing for Dorner that it seems to be a primary reason for his rampage; he felt betrayed by the entire LAPD (or at least dozens of officers), because he tried to expose a case of excess force. Yet, Dorner discusses several incidents of entirely unacceptable behavior that he personally witnessed (nazi songs, n-words, stealing, murder) and that he did nothing to correct or stop prior to the excessive force incident.
CONVENTIONAL WISDOM IS THAT MOST MODERN “JOURNALISTS” ARE HALFWIT ASSHATS WHO WILL REPORT ANY SENSATIONAL OR BREAKING RUMOR AS FACT WITHOUT ANY VERIFICATION.
@ Fax: Look it up yourself and make your own assumptions about the victim. Lazy much?
@pdxMB – I did out of curiosity, and not surprised by what I found. He’s got a hell of a claim to fame with his Year Book Sex fiasco and threatening hundreds of innocent people with possession of child pornography for an innocuous picture that is wide-spread on the internet. Also he has an interesting quote about his duty to investigate “teenage sex,” while ironically during the same week of that quote being published, deputies in his agency were arraigned for sleeping with teenagers, and the victims claimed in their law suit that abuse was well known and covered up by multiple people within the agency. Year book picture of two innocent teenagers (17 year old touching a 15 on the leg but up the skirt) was worth investigating, while his fellow deputies sleeping with teenagers was swept under the rug.
Seems like a pretty typical cop working in a pretty typical police agency to me.
@ Fax… so in your mind… Fire away? Got it. I stand by my original statement. He didn’t deserve to die, and Damosa was an ass for suggesting that he did.
@pdxMB – No, no, no – I’m a moral man, and I’m not a big fan of death or people killing or people being killed…
Let me put it to you this way:
If I pointed my gun at you, you would be totally justified in killing me for my act. You wouldn’t need to kill/shoot me, but you would be justified if you did so.
Police have pointed their gun at me more than once, and sometimes, it was more than one gun. The number of injustices that I’ve experienced by the police pales in comparison to the number of injustices that I’ve personally witnessed or heard or read about. So, I can certainly understand why someone would “Fire away”.
Thankfully for the police, I’m a forgiving guy. I’m a peaceful guy, I am absolutely a voice for anti-violence, except in the case of self-defense, or the defense of others; and instead of using the violence that I’ve been trained to use (by your tax dollar), I instead study injustice.
I don’t think this police officer deserved to die as well, but when you say that you suppose a cop is a good guy without evidence, more accurately you “highly doubt” he is not an ass, it makes me wonder what sort of news you’re consuming, it makes me wonder what sort of life you’re living. I guess my life is just different.
@fidelity: I used to live in PDX, but I moved. And there aren’t any good weeklies here.