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Three killed in Washington shootings

Tim Klass
Associated Press
Vail, CO Colorado

SEATTLE ” A U.S. Forest Service officer was fatally shot Saturday while making a traffic stop of a man who investigators suspect had also killed the owner of the pickup truck he was driving when captured, the Washington State Patrol said. The suspect died later in a shootout with sheriff’s deputies.

The FBI was investigating the shooting of Officer Kristine Fairbanks, 51, a canine officer with 15 years in the forest service, state Trooper Krista D. Hedstrom told The Associated Press early Sunday.

Shawn M. Roe, 36, the suspected shooter, had three handguns and fired at least one shot at the deputies who confronted him at a convenience store, Hedstrom said.



Roe was a convicted felon with “an active criminal history” and was supposed to be under state Corrections Department supervision, she added. He apparently was not being sought on any warrant, she said.

The third shooting victim was described only as a man in his 60s.

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“We’re just hoping that nobody else shows up” dead or injured, Hedstrom said.

The shootings occurred on the northern Olympic Peninsula about 50 miles west of Seattle.

Fairbanks called the state patrol at 2:22 p.m. and said she had stopped Roe in an old Dodge van without license plates near the Dungeness Forks campground in Olympic National Park.

When a dispatcher tried to contact Fairbanks with information on Roe, there was no response and troopers and a sheriff’s deputy were dispatched. The deputy arrived first, at 3:10 p.m., and found Fairbanks dead. Her police dog was unharmed in her vehicle.

Authorities found the van about 6:30 p.m., abandoned not far away in a densely wooded area. Posters and flyers warning people to be on the lookout for Roe were distributed in the area.

A security guard at a convenience store near the Seven Cedars Casino on U.S. Highway 101 alerted sheriff’s deputies at about 9:30 p.m. that a man matching Roe’s description was in the store, Hedstrom said.

Two deputies arrived and told him to put up his hands as he came out of the store, but he drew a handgun and fired at least once before both deputies opened fire, Hedstrom said. Neither deputy was hit. Roe died at the scene.

Roe was found to be carrying two modern handguns and an older six-shooter, she said.

Investigators checked the registration of a white pickup he was seen driving when he arrived at the store, went to the house of the registered owner, and found the body of a man who had been shot, Hedstrom said.


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