Setting fire to fugitive’s cabin ‘not deliberate’
Former Los Angeles police officer Christopher Dorner, 33, was wanted in a killing spree targeting law enforcement officers that left four people dead. A man matching his description was surrounded inside a lodging nestled in the San Bernardino National Forest on Tuesday.
“We did not intentionally burn down that cabin to get Mr Dorner out,” San Bernardino county sheriff John McMahon said.
Investigators had not yet formally identified charred remains found in the burned-out structure, although they are believed to be those of Dorner.
“The suspect that we were following... matched his description,” McMahon said. “Our coroner’s division is working on trying to confirm the identity through forensics and we should know that at some point here soon,” he said.
Dorner lost his job with the Los Angeles Police Department in 2008 after a police board of inquiry found he lied in accusing a training officer of using excessive force against a homeless man. LAPD chief Charlie Beck has opened a review of that case.
Last Wednesday, Dorner was named as the prime suspect in a double slaying that occurred the weekend before, about 65km south of Los Angeles in Irvine.
Police say he killed a university security officer and his fiancee, the daughter of a retired LAPD captain who represented Dorner in disciplinary action that led to his termination.
The search intensified last Thursday after he was accused of killing a Riverside policeman and wounding another officer in an ambush about 100km east of Los Angeles.
Law enforcement converged later that day in the San Bernardino Mountains after a pickup truck identified as Dorner’s was found abandoned and burning in the snow near the ski resort community of Big Bear Lake northeast of LA.
The ensuing manhunt ended on Tuesday following a shootout at the cabin.
During a lull in the firefight, the cabin caught fire and was quickly engulfed in flames. It remained unclear how the blaze began.
Los Angeles-based CBS television affiliate, KCAL, and CNN, have broadcast an audio recording of what sounds like police radio chatter during the confrontation at the lodging. On the tape, voices purported to be officers shout, “Burn it down.”
McMahon said officers used pyrotechnic-type tear gas canisters, which he said generate “a lot of heat”: “We had introduced those canisters into the residence and a fire erupted.”
