The suspect’s grandfather said that he wanted to be a firefighter and that “something must have snapped” for him to have committed such an attack.
The suspect believed to have fatally shot two firefighters and wounded a third after intentionally setting a brush fire in Idaho spoke with responding firefighters before opening fire, the area sheriff said Monday.
Wess Val Roley, 20, is suspected of intentionally setting the fire to “ambush” firefighters, Kootenai County Sheriff Bob Norris said during a news conference Monday.
“There was an interaction with the firefighters,” Norris said. “It had something to do with his vehicle being parked where it was.”
Roley’s body was found with a gun in the area of the blaze in Canfield Mountain near Coeur D’Alene, authorities said, almost six hours after the shooting began.
“It appears right now we have a shotgun that was used, but we’re still processing the scene,” Norris said.
Some rifled slugs — which are large, solid projectiles — were fired, but some smaller shot or fragments were also found, he said.
There was no manifesto found, and officials don’t yet have a motive, Norris said, noting that investigators have yet to inventory Roley’s debris-filled vehicle. The sheriff added that those who have seen the vehicle said it appeared Roley was living in it.
The attack stunned some members of the suspect’s family — who said he had dreams of becoming a firefighter himself — as his name began circulating in news reports on Monday, and they initially thought he could have been at the scene as a volunteer.
Wess Roley’s grandfather told News that “something must have snapped” for his grandson to have committed such violence, particularly against firefighters.
“He actually really respected law enforcement,” Dale Roley said. “He loved firefighters. It didn’t make sense that he was shooting firefighters. Maybe he got rejected or something.”
Dale Roley said his grandson, who attended high school in Phoenix, where his mother lives, lived with him in Oklahoma for several months before moving to Idaho last summer to be closer to his father.
Norris described Roley as a transient who lived in the area for most of 2024, but the sheriff did not know when he arrived in Idaho. He has part residences in California and Arizona, Norris said.
Neither of Roley’s parents could immediately be reached for comment.
His grandfather said his grandson’s height, standing around 5-foot-8, might have prevented him from becoming a firefighter.
“I know he had been in contact to get a job with a fire department,” Dale Roley said. “He wanted to be part of a team that he sort of idolized.”
Norris said that investigators have checked with local firefighting entities and have not yet found any application or statement of intent about becoming a firefighter.
Dale Roley said his grandson had worked at a tree service and thought he had the proper tree-climbing skills to be an asset to a fire department fighting wildfires. He also knew how to use a firearm and would go hog hunting.
Norris said that investigators believe that after the firefighters were shot, the shooter fired at deputies from a tree.
Wess Roley had no known criminal history, Norris said. Local law enforcement had five “very minor” interactions with him, the sheriff said, but they were for things like checks after property owners noticed a nearby lived-in vehicle.
There were times the suspect appeared “nervous” and “high strung” and “kind of a loner” — what his grandfather chalked up as “normal issues for kids these days.” But, he added, he didn’t know him to be violent with others.
Wess Roley’s childhood may have been tumultuous at times, court records show.
Documents filed in a Maricopa County, Arizona, court in 2015 show his mother, Heather Lynn Cuchiara, sought an order of protection against Roley’s father and her then-husband, Jason Roley. She said that in October 2015, Jason Roley was arrested for criminal damage and assault after he allegedly went to her home and threatened to commit suicide. Cuchiara said things escalated, and Jason Roley punched holes in the walls, destroyed her cellphone and pushed her to the ground.
Cuchiara expressed concerns about there being drugs and two guns in Jason Roley’s home, according to the documents.
In another alleged incident in November 2015, she said Jason Roley had told her that he would be “waiting outside with a sniper rifle,” according to the document. She asked that the order of protection include their son, Wess Roley, as a protected person. (He was 10 at the time.)