FORKS — As Nedra Reed turned Saturday onto U.S. Highway 101, she spotted a familiar sight in her rearview mirror:
U.S. Forest Service Officer Kristine Fairbanks also pulling onto the highway and heading east.
“We just went on our way,” said Reed, mayor of Forks, about her trip with her husband, Phil, “never knowing that was the last time we would see her.”
Fairbanks eventually drove to the Forest Service’s Dungeness Forks Campground south of Sequim, where she was fatally shot after she approached a Dodge van that had no license plates.
Clallam County sheriff’s officials believe she was killed by Shawn Matthew Roe, a man with a history of domestic violence.
Roe was shot to death by a Clallam deputy about seven hours after Fairbanks was last heard from.
Fairbanks, a wife and mother, was a 15-year veteran of Forest Service law enforcement who credited her forestry professor father, John Willits, now a leader in the North Olympic Land Trust, with teaching her a love for the outdoors.
