I’ve been working as LE park Ranger this winter in AZ and I heard about this yesterday. I didn’t know Ranger Anderson but I know people who do. It’s pretty scary stuff. I had two visitors ask me recently if I really needed all that stuff on my belt, and why would you need law enforcement in parks. Just goes to show how little people understand about what LE rangers do. NPS LE rangers are the most assaulted LE group in the country, probably because a lot of people don’t respect our authority. Also criminals are drawn to the remoteness of National Parks. Someone said in an earlier post that the last ranger to be killed was in 2002. That’s not true, there were six rangers killed in 2009. In a lot of the parks we don’t operate like other law enforcement in the sense that we often have to patrol alone and backup can be very far away. The guy who did this was clearly unstable and the rangers involved might not have known how dangerous he was. Although if he was a suspect in another shooting, and it was already in the system, that information might have come back to the ranger who was following him, after blowing through the checkpoint, if he was able to run the plate on the vehicle. There were two rangers at the roadblock when the gunman started shooting. It was 90 minutes before any medical help could get to Anderson because this guy was still shooting, otherwise she might have lived. They found him dead this morning though. Probably killed himself.
My deepest sympathies. Hopefully a thorough and detailed review of how this was handled and maybe something can be figured out how to prevent something like this happening again. I’m reasonably sure existing policies and procedures were followed in this case (no reports so far that they weren’t) but maybe there is a procedural tweak than can be made going forward.