By GILLIAN FLACCUS and TAMI ABDOLLAH
Associated Press
BIG BEAR, Calif. (AP) - A fugitive ex-Los Angeles
police officer sought in three killings was believed barricaded in a
cabin Tuesday after a furious gunbattle with police in the snow-covered
mountains of Southern California, authorities said, the culmination of
an intensive manhunt that left a region on edge for nearly a week.
Two officers were injured and were being airlifted
to a hospital, the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department said. The
extent of their injuries wasn't known.
Officers have been swarming the snow-covered Big
Bear region since Thursday, when they found the burned-out pickup truck
of Christopher Dorner. The former Navy reservist killed a former police
captain's daughter and her fiance and a Riverside officer, and injured
two other officers, police said, promising to bring "warfare" to Los
Angeles police and their family members.
But, until Tuesday, authorities didn't know whether
Dorner was still near Big Bear or had fled, and thousands of officers
were searching for him across three states and Mexico.
At a midafternoon news conference, LAPD Cmdr.
Andrew Smith said he could not confirm whether Dorner was in the cabin
but urged the fugitive to surrender.
"Enough is enough," Smith said. "It's time for you to turn yourself in. It's time to end the bloodshed."
The developments in the nearly weeklong massive
manhunt began about 12:20 p.m. Tuesday when deputies in the Big Bear
area got a report of a stolen vehicle in the area, the sheriff's office
said. The people whose vehicle was stolen described the suspect as
looking similar to Dorner.
When authorities found the vehicle, the suspect,
believed to be Dorner, ran into the forest and barricaded himself inside
a cabin. A short time later there was an exchange of gunfire between
law enforcement and the suspect.
It's not clear which agency the two agents wounded belong to, State Fish and Wildlife Assistant Chief Dan Sforza told KCAL.
It's also believed Dorner committed a residential
burglary of a cabin where a couple was tied up, an officer told The
Associated Press.
The officer requested anonymity because the officer was not authorized to speak publicly about the ongoing investigation.
One of the people was able to get away and make a
call. It's not clear if that's the same person who called police about
the carjacking.
Road blocks were set up around Big Bear.
The shootout occurred in Seven Oaks off Highway 38,
about five miles as the crow flies from where Dorner's pickup was
found. A ridge with peaks topping 8,000 feet lies between the locations.
By road, the two areas are about 30 miles apart.
The former Navy reservist began his run from the
law on Feb. 6 after authorities connected the slayings of a former
police captain's daughter and her fiance with an angry manifesto they
said Dorner posted on Facebook. He vowed to bring "warfare" to Los
Angeles police and their family members, which led the department to
assign officers to guard more than 50 families connected to his
so-called targets.
Within hours of the release of photos of the
6-foot, 270-pounder described as armed and "extremely dangerous," Dorner
allegedly unsuccessfully tried to steal a boat in San Diego to flee to
Mexico and then ambushed police in Riverside County, shooting three and
killing one.
Jumpy officers guarding one of his targets in
Torrance on Thursday shot and injured two women delivering newspapers
because they mistook their pickup truck for Dorner's.
The hunt for Dorner appeared to go cold after his
burned-out pickup was found later that morning in the mountains east of
Los Angeles and his footprints disappeared on frozen ground.
Police found charred weapons and camping gear
inside the truck, but it wasn't clear if he had fled into the San
Bernardino Mountains near the resort town of Big Bear Lake or left the
area.
Helicopters using heat-seeking technology searched
the forest from above while scores of officers, some using bloodhounds,
scoured the ground and checked hundreds of vacation cabins - many vacant
this time of year - in the area. A snowstorm hindered the search and
may have helped cover his tracks, though authorities were hopeful he
would leave fresh footprints if hiding in the wilderness.
Dorner's beef with the department dated back at
least five years, when he was fired for filing a false report accusing
his training officer of kicking a mentally ill suspect. Dorner, who is
black, claimed in his manifesto that he was the subject of racism by the
department and fired for doing the right thing.
He said he would get even with those who wronged him in an event to reclaim his good name.
"You're going to see what a whistleblower can do
when you take everything from him especially his NAME!!!" he wrote. "You
have awoken a sleeping giant."
Chief Charlie Beck, who initially dismissed the
allegations in Dorner's rant, said he would reopen the investigation
into his firing - not to appease the ex-officer, but to restore
confidence in the black community, which long had a fractured
relationship with police that has improved in recent years.
One of the targets listed in the manifesto was
former LAPD Capt. Randal Quan, who represented Dorner before the
disciplinary board. Dorner claimed he put the interests of the
department above his.
The first victims were Quan's daughter, Monica
Quan, 28, a college basketball coach, and her fiance, Keith Lawrence,
27, who were shot multiple times in their car in a parking garage near
their condo.
Dorner served in the Navy, earning a rifle marksman
ribbon and pistol expert medal. He was assigned to a naval undersea
warfare unit and various aviation training units, according to military
records. He took leave from the LAPD for a six-month deployment to
Bahrain in 2006 and 2007.
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