[IsraelTimes] The 20-year-old transient who started a wildfire and then fatally shot two firefighters and wounded another in northern Idaho drew swastikas in school and was obsessed with guns, former classmates tell USA Today.Authorities say they do not yet know why Wess Roley staged the attack Sunday at Canfield Mountain, a popular recreation area just north of Coeur d’Alene, setting off a massive manhunt. He was found dead after taking his own life, police say.
“We have not been able to find a manifesto,” Kootenai County Sheriff Bob Norris told reporters earlier, adding a motive was still unknown.
“My good friend saw drawings of swastikas and guns in his notebook,” Harry Standley, who attended middle and high school with Roley, tells USA Today. “We were all pretty scared of him.”
A second classmate who also attended elementary school with Roley also recalled the swastika incident, USA Today reports, though he just thought Roley was trying to be “edgy.”
The report also includes an unattributed quote claiming he had “Nazi tendencies.”
“Everybody just thought he was weird,” Standley says, adding that “he was also obsessed with guns.”
Roley was living out of his vehicle, had once aspired to be a firefighter and had only a handful of minor contacts with area police, Norris said.
He had ties to California and Arizona and was living in Idaho “for the better part of 2024,” the sheriff added.
Roley lived with T.J. Franks Jr. for about six months in Sandpoint, Idaho, while working for a tree service, Franks said on Monday. Franks had cameras in his apartment that caught Roley throwing gang signs at them one day, which worried Franks to the point that he called police.
“I didn’t know what to really think about it,” Franks said. “I just called the cops and had them talk to him.”