Icy death for suspected killer of park ranger
Published 12:01 am Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Peninsula Daily News
news services
MOUNT RAINIER NATIONAL PARK, Wash. — An armed Iraq War veteran suspected of killing a Mount Rainier National Park ranger managed to evade snowshoe-wearing SWAT teams and dogs on his trail for nearly a day.
He couldn’t, however, escape the cold.
A plane searching the remote wilderness for Benjamin Colton Barnes, 24, on Monday discovered his body lying partially submerged in an icy, snowy mountain creek with snow banks standing several feet high on either side.
[See photo in “related photos” gallery, at right.]
“He was wearing T-shirt, a pair of jeans and one tennis shoe. That was it,” Pierce County Sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer said.
Barnes did not have any external wounds and appeared to have died due to the elements, he said.
His body showed no sign of injuries, and he was carrying a handgun, a magazine of ammunition and a knife, said Troyer.
The FBI recovered another ammunition magazine near Barnes’ body, and the sheriff’s Swift Water Rescue Team found an assault-style rifle about 50 yards upstream.
Officials said Barnes had left survival gear in his car, which he fled after firing on rangers Sunday.
Killed was 34-year-old Ranger Margaret Anderson, the mother of two daughters ages 3 and 2, who was gunned down after she had set a roadblock to stop a car being pursued after failing to stop at a chain-up checkpoint.
A cruiser being drive by Ranger Dan Camiccia, who was in pursuit of Barnes, also was peppered with gunfire as it approached. Camiccia was not injured.
A Pierce County SWAT unit, sent to render aid to Anderson, also came under fire, according to law-enforcement officers, delaying efforts to reach the injured park ranger.
Officials say Anderson was shot while still in her vehicle and never had a chance to return fire.
Officials said the national park would remain closed Tuesday as the investigation continued and the rangers grieve the loss of their colleague.
According to police and court documents, Barnes had a troubled transition to civilian life, with accusations in a child custody dispute that he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder following his Iraq deployments and was suicidal.
Barnes is believed to have fled to the remote park on Sunday to hide after an earlier shooting at a New Year’s house party near Seattle that wounded four, two critically.
He was heavily armed and equipped to survive in the wilderness when he arrived at the national park about 10 a.m. Sunday.
Found about mile from shooting site
After Anderson was shot, Barnes fled into heavy woods and deep snow, where a surveillance plane using heat-tracking equipment charted his meandering path overnight.
While his body was found about a mile from the shooting site, Barnes had traveled much farther, crisscrossing Paradise Creek several times, apparently in hopes of eluding his trackers, Troyer said.
The body was found partially in the creek, just above Narada Falls.
The Army confirmed Monday that Barnes had been a private first class whose military service ended in the fall of 2009.
He received a misconduct discharge at Fort Lewis (now Joint Base Lewis-McChord) after he was charged with DUI and improper transport of a privately owned weapon.
By then, he had served two years and seven months of active duty, according to Army Human Resources Command information cited by Maj. Chris Ophardt, a spokesman for Joint Base Lewis-McChord.
While at Fort Lewis, Barnes served with a Stryker brigade and saw duty in Iraq. Army officials were unable Monday to identify which Stryker brigade Barnes served with.
The FBI said Barnes served in communications while in Iraq.
He had struggled after returning from Iraq.
In July, Nicole Santos, the mother of his 1-year-old daughter, obtained a protection order and curtailed his visits with his daughter because of angry, erratic and sometimes suicidal behavior, according to child-custody documents filed in Pierce County Superior Court.
“I just feel there is so much instability,” Santos wrote in a July 19 petition seeking to restrict Barnes’ access to the child.
Barnes had “deployed to Iraq in 2007-2008 and has possible PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) issues,” she wrote. “He gets easily irritated, angry, depressed and frustrated.”
Barnes was 21 and still in the Army in March 2009, when he was cited for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs after being stopped about 4 a.m. by a state trooper on Interstate 5 in South Seattle, according to court records.
On the citation, Barnes gave an address in Adamsville, Tenn.
While the case was pending, Barnes was ordered by a judge to remain on his military base, except for off-post military purposes.
Barnes, charged in King County, pleaded guilty to the DUI charge on Aug. 10, 2009. On the plea form, he listed his education as General Educational Development (GED), the equivalent of a high-school diploma.
On Feb. 24, 2010, Barnes was sentenced to one day in jail, with credit for a day already served; placed on supervised probation for six months; and ordered to pay a $350 fine. He also was ordered to use no alcoholic beverages or nonprescribed drugs and to complete alcohol-education programs, according to court records.
In June 2010, Barnes was cited for unlawful recreational fishing in the Snoqualmie River, including possession of an undersized trout and the use of an improper hook.
Anderson’s slaying has stunned her colleagues and the National Park Service, which has seen only eight other rangers murdered in the line of duty in the past century. .
“We have never had an incident like that at Mount Rainier National Park,” park spokesman Kevin Bacher said Monday morning.
This was the first slaying of a ranger in the park, although rangers have died on the mountain itself.
Park superintendent Randy King said Anderson, who was married to another Rainier ranger, had served as a park ranger for about four years.
King said Anderson’s husband also was working as a ranger elsewhere in the park at the time of the shooting.
Sunday shooting
Late Sunday police said Barnes was a suspect in another shooting incident.
On New Year’s, there was an argument at a house party in Skyway, south of Seattle, and gunfire erupted, police said.
Barnes was connected to the shooting, said Sgt. Cindi West, King County Sheriff’s spokeswoman.
Police believe Barnes headed to the remote park wilderness to “hide out” following the Skyway shooting.
“The speculation is that he may have come up here, specifically for that reason, to get away,” parks spokesman Kevin Bacher told reporters early Monday.
“The speculation is he threw some stuff in the car and headed up here to hide out.”
Anderson had set up a roadblock Sunday morning to stop a man who had blown through a checkpoint rangers use to check
if vehicles have tire chains for winter conditions.
A gunman opened fire on her before she was able to exit her vehicle, authorities say.
Before fleeing, the gunman fired shots at both Anderson and the ranger that trailed him, but only Anderson was hit.
Anderson would have been armed, as she was one of the rangers tasked with law enforcement, parks spokesman Kevin
Bacher said.
Troyer said she was shot before she had even got out of the vehicle.
Weapons in parks
The shooting renewed debate about a federal law that made it legal for people to take loaded weapons into national parks.
The 2010 law made possession of firearms subject to state gun laws.
Bill Wade, the outgoing chair of the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees, said Congress should be regretting its decision.
“The many congressmen and senators that voted for the legislation that allowed loaded weapons to be brought into the parks ought to be feeling pretty bad right now,” said Wade.
Wade called Sunday’s fatal shooting a tragedy that could have been prevented. He hopes Congress will reconsider the law that took effect in early 2010, but doubts that will happen in today’s political climate.
Calls and emails to the National Rifle Association requesting comment were not immediately returned on Monday.
The NRA said media fears of gun violence in parks were unlikely to be realized, the NRA wrote in a statement about the law after it went into effect.
“The new law affects firearms possession, not use,” it said.
The group pushed for the law saying people have a right to defend themselves against park animals and other people.
