What we know about Wess Roley, the 20-year-old suspect in the Idaho fire shooting

CNN

12 hours ago

The suspect who police believe gunned down two firefighters Sunday after starting a brush fire in Idaho wanted to pursue a career as a firefighter himself, his grandfather told CNN.
Wess Roley, 20, was identified by a law enforcement official as the suspect in the shooting in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, which left two firefighters responding to the blaze dead and injured a third. Roley was found dead at the scene.
Roley's grandfather, Dale Roley, told CNN his grandson came from a family of arborists and had been working in the tree service industry while trying to figure out his career path.
'He wanted to be a fireman – he was doing tree work and he wanted to be a fireman in the forest,' Dale Roley said. 'As far as I know, he was actually pursuing it.'
Wess Roley owned a shotgun and a long rifle, his grandfather said, but it's unclear whether the attack – which authorities described as a sniper ambush – was carried out with those firearms.
Dale Roley said he typically spoke with his grandson on a weekly basis, but they hadn't spoken in the last month because Wess Roley had lost his phone. He said the suspect had loving family and friends, and he vacationed in Hawaii with his mother last year, according to social media posts.
'It wasn't like he was a loner,' Dale Roley told CNN. 'We had no reason to suspect that he would be involved in something like this.' He said he was holding out hope that his grandson wasn't actually the shooter.
The suspect had previously lived in the Phoenix area, according to public records. A running website said that he ran track at a high school in the area and was a member of the school's class of 2024.
Court documents show that Roley had a tumultuous family life growing up. His mother filed for divorce in September 2015, when her son was 10 years old, and wrote in court documents that her husband had threatened her, pushed her to the ground, and 'punched several holes in the walls.'
'He threatened to sit outside my house with a sniper rifle or burn my house down,' she wrote.
A judge granted a protective order preventing Roley's father from having contact with his wife or son, but later amended the order to remove the son after his father wrote in a court filing that 'I am not a danger to my son or anyone else' and that his wife 'did not tell the truth in her statement.'
The divorce was granted in November 2015, and Roley's mother was designated as his 'primary residential parent.'
Roley's father told a CNN reporter outside his home in Priest River, Idaho, that he wasn't close with his son and hadn't seen him since a family gathering last year. He didn't respond to follow-up phone calls about the decade-old allegations in the court documents. The suspect's mother also didn't answer phone calls Monday morning.
CNN's Isabelle Chapman, Curt Devine and Majlie de Puy Kamp contributed to this report.