Peninsula Daily News and The Associated Press
BLYN — A traffic stop in the woods led to the shooting death of a U.S. Forest Service officer, a shootout in which a fugitive was killed and the discovery of a third gunshot victim at the home of the owner of a pickup truck he was driving, the Washington State Patrol said.
The FBI was investigating the shooting of Officer Kristine Fairbanks, 51, a certified canine officer with 15 years in the Forest Service, and the other shootings in the Sequim area were being investigated by the patrol and Clallam County sheriff’s deputies, state Trooper Krista D. Hedstrom told The Associated Press early Sunday.
Shawn M. Roe, 36, whose last known address was in Everett and before that in Shelton, had three handguns and fired at least one shot before he died in a shootout with two deputies at a convenience store in Blyn, Hedstrom said.
Roe was a convicted felon with “an active criminal history” and was supposed to be under state Corrections Department supervision, but details were not immediately available and he apparently was not being sought on any warrant, she added.
The third shooting victim was described only as a man in his 60s.
No one else was known to be hurt in the shootings, Hedstrom said.
“We’re just hoping that nobody else shows up” dead or injured, she said.
It was the second deadly shooting spree in less than three weeks in Washington state.
On Sept. 2 six people were shot to death and four were wounded in Skagit County before Isaac Zamora, 28, a drug offender described by his mother as “desperately mentally ill,” turned himself in. He has been charged with six counts of murder and four of assault.
Hedstrom said the shootings Saturday began after Fairbanks called the 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, roughly half a dozen miles south of Sequim.
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, and posters and fliers warning people to be on the lookout for Roe were distributed around the Sequim area.
At 9:30 p.m., Hedstrom said, a security guard at the Longhouse Market and Deli near 7 Cedars Casino on U.S. Highway 101 in Blyn alerted sheriff’s deputies that a man meeting Roe’s description was in the convenience store.
Two deputies arrived and told him to put up his hands as he came out of the store, but he drew at least one 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, located between the store and the campground, and found the body of a man who had been shot, Hedstrom said.
