PORT ANGELES — A five-hour standoff between law enforcement officers, including a State Patrol SWAT team, and suspected double-killer John F. Loring ended Wednesday when Loring shot himself with a handgun in an apartment bathroom, law enforcement authorities said.
Loring, 45 and homeless, was suspected of killing David J. Randle, 19, on Tuesday morning with a handgun at a Woodcock Road home near Meyer Andrew Lane in the unincorporated Dungeness district north of Sequim.
Loring also was suspected of murder in the death of Ray Varney, 68, whose body was found Wednesday in the Diamond Point area 10 miles east of where Randle was killed.
The standoff began at about 6:30 a.m. Wednesday at the federally subsidized low-income Evergreen Court Apartments, 2202 W. 16th St. in Port Angeles.
It ended when Loring shot himself in the head at about noon, Clallam County Sheriff Bill Benedict said.
Loring, a convicted felon, apparently shot himself after tear gas was lobbed into the apartment, while the complex was surrounded by heavily armed officers.
Residents of the apartment complex had been evacuated early that morning.
“As the gas was being deployed,” officers heard the sound of a shot being fired from inside, said State Patrol Lt. Dan Hall, who oversees detachments in Clallam and Jefferson counties, at a Wednesday afternoon press conference.
After that, they lost communication with Loring, Hall said.
Authorities tracked Loring to the apartments on the basis of tips from citizens, chief among them a lead from a caller from Victoria whom Loring had called, said Clallam County Undersheriff Ron Peregrin.
Loring is from Victoria, Peregrin said. Authorities do not know how long he lived in Clallam County.
The renter of the apartment was not present.
Four people were in the apartment with Loring but were not hostages, Peregrin said.
By 6:30 a.m., the four others had left the apartment, and negotiators with the State Patrol Special Weapons and Tactics Team — or SWAT — made their first phone contact with Loring.
The negotiators tried coaxing Loring out of the apartment for several hours without success before they lobbed tear gas into the unit.
A remote-controlled bomb-detection device with a camera was subsequently deployed inside the residence.
At one point in the morning, from about 30 yards away, the SWAT team could be seen bunched together, inching toward an apartment window behind which Loring was holed up.
Benedict said Randle was the son of a woman Loring had dated.
Loring had also dated Varney’s daughter, the sheriff said.
York Hoskins, 29, who lives about a block from Evergreen Court with his wife and two children, said his 13-year-old son, Dakoda, usually walked to school down 16th Street, which by early Wednesday was blocked off by police cruisers.
Early Wednesday morning, Dakoda was told by police he had to take another route, Hoskins said, as distant gunshots eerily rang out from a nearby shooting range — which was not connected to the situation with Loring.
“It freaked him out,” Hoskins recalled.
Benedict had described Loring as “armed and dangerous” after the Tuesday morning shooting in the Dungeness unincorporated area.
Authorities connected Loring to Varney’s death because Loring was driving Varney’s white 2001 Dodge Dakota pickup truck when he fled from the Woodcock Road incident.
Loring was believed to be carrying the handgun that was used to kill Randle when he left the Woodcock Road residence.
Authorities later recovered Varney’s vehicle.
Eyewitnesses to the Woodcock Road shooting said a man later identified as Loring approached the Woodcock Road home where Randle was shot after an altercation, the Sheriff’s Office said.
Authorities said Loring tried to force his way into the residence and that the woman he dated and her new boyfriend were there.
Randle’s body was found in the driveway.
Loring was homeless and living in his truck.
He had been served with a restraining order that prevented him from living in a former residence in Sequim.
Personnel with the Sequim Police Department, Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, Clallam County Fire District 3, the Victoria Police Department and U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Air and Marine assisted in the investigation.
Loring was arrested earlier this year for investigation of being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm, Benedict said.
Loring had been convicted of possession of a controlled substance, methamphetamine, according to Superior Court records.
At the time of his death, Loring had been released on $5,000 bail on a Jan. 9 charge of second-degree unlawful possession of a firearm and violation of a no-contact, protection order.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.