NPS Ranger Margaret Anderson murdered by "survivalist" gunman in Rainier National Park [View all]

[Kolesar]

Update, 2:38 p.m.: Authorities say the body of an Iraq war veteran suspected in the slaying of a Mount Rainier National Park ranger was believed to have been found dead in the park Monday, according to an Associated Press report.

Benjamin Colton Barnes, 24, apparently died after trudging into chest-deep snow while trying to elude snow-shoe wearing SWAT team members and other authorities who were on his trail.

Barnes reportedly fled to the remote park after an earlier shooting that wounded four near Seattle.
...
Original Post at WaPo:
Pierce County, Wash., sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer told the Associated Press that Benjamin Colton Barnes, a 24-year-old believed to have survivalist skills, was a “strong person of interest” in the killing.

The Park Service said that on Sunday morning, a car believed to be driven by Barnes failed to stop at a required tire chain checkpoint. Anderson blocked the road with her vehicle when Barnes’s vehicle failed to stop at the checkpoint. He then allegedly jumped from his car and opened fired, fatally shooting Anderson, the agency said.
...
The Rev. Joe Guttormsun, pastor of New Jerusalem Lutheran Church in Lovettsville in Loudoun County, said that Anderson and her husband, Eric, had become members of the church in 2007. He said the couple lived in Harpers Ferry, W.Va., and that Margaret Anderson had been a ranger at Harpers Ferry National Historic Park, while Eric Anderson worked at Antietam National Battlefield in Sharpsburg, Md.

“They were just a wonderful, wonderful couple,” Guttormsun said.

He said that in 2010, just before the birth of the first of their two daughters, they learned that they would both be assigned to Mount Rainier National Park.

“They were very, very excited,” the pastor said. “They loved the mountains, they loved the woods, they loved to travel.”
_______________
He killed a mother
in cold blood.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/post/deadly-weekend-for-federal-law-enforcement-officers/2012/01/02/gIQAqRUCWP_blog.html