Fugitive ex-LAPD officer, Christopher Dorner, whose remains were found in a burnt-out cabin after a six-day manhunt, died from a single gunshot wound to the head, authorities say.
Police had launched the manhunt for Christopher Dorner after he killed three people, apparently in revenge for being fired from the LA police in 2008.
Christopher Dorner was cornered near Big Bear Lake and incendiary tear gas was fired in.
Police could not confirm whether the gunshot was self-inflicted.
After a six-hour post-mortem examination, San Bernardino County coroner Kevin Lacy said: “We are not yet able to speak about the manner of death and tell you whether or not it was the result of a self-inflicted wound or another round.
“While we are still assembling the reports and putting it together, the implication seems to be that the wound that took Christopher Dorner’s life was self-inflicted.”
Christopher Dorner had holed up in a flat in Big Bear Lake, a ski resort 80 miles east of Los Angeles, for six days after he killed a couple and a policeman.
San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon told reporters that officers had knocked on the door of the condominium during the manhunt.
“Our deputy knocked on that door and did not get an answer, and in hindsight it’s probably a good thing that he did not answer based on his actions before and after that event,” he said.
Christopher Dorner, whose remains were found in a burnt-out cabin after a six-day manhunt, died from a single gunshot wound to the head
When owners arrived to clean the building, Christopher Dorner tied them up and fled in their car, killing a sheriff’s deputy in a shootout and then barricading himself in the remote cabin.
A Swat team fired incendiary tear gas to try to force Christopher Dorner out.
A blaze started and a single gunshot was heard.
Police found a cache of weapons in the cabin, including assault rifles.
Christopher Dorner started his killing spree on February 3 when he shot dead the daughter of a former police captain and her fiancé.
The woman’s father, Randal Quan, had represented Christopher Dorner at a police disciplinary board.
Christopher Dorner was fired in 2008 from the force on a charge of making false statements, after he lodged a complaint against his field training officer, saying she had kicked a suspect during an arrest.
In an online manifesto, Christopher Dorner, who was black, suggested that racism was still rife in the LAPD.
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Police are still searching for the motive of Adam Lanza’s killing spree, but one working theory is that he was angry that his mother was planning to commit him to a psychiatric facility because he was becoming too difficult for her to handle alone.
Given his decision to kill his mother Nancy Lanza while she lay sleeping in her bed at their Connecticut home and then drive to his former elementary school to purposefully kill innocent children, there had to be a strong connection in his mind between his anger and the school.
Nancy Lanza, 52, was thought to volunteer at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and so the theory extends to the fact that Adam felt he loved those children more than she loved him, since she was planning to send him away.
Fox News quotes a neighborhood figure, whose father works as the pastor of an area church, as saying that the 20-year-old shooter found out that his mother was in the legal process of having him committed and was upset.
That news, coupled with his jealousy of the time she allegedly spent with a group of kindergarteners at Sandy Hook, is thought to have served as the basis of the killing.
A number of factors are still unconfirmed in the theory, and it appears that they may remain as such for some time.
Records of conservatorship filings, which Nancy Lanza would have needed to make in order to commit her son since he is over 18-years-old, are sealed by the courts so if any such filings were made they will not be released publicly.
Sandy Hook gunman Adam Lanza feared his mother was planning to have him committed to psychiatric home and targeted the children that she loved more than him
“Adam Lanza believed she cared more for the children than she did for him, and the reason he probably thought this (was the fact that) she was petitioning for conservatorship and wanted to have him committed,” Joshua Flashman told Fox News.
One of the biggest questions remaining ever since the shooting was reported on Friday was Nancy Lanza’s connection to the school which was clearly singled out as a target by Adam.
The majority of his shooting was limited to the reception, where he forced his way into the building and killed those standing in his way, and then to a single first grade classroom.
Those children are thought to be the ones that Nancy Lanza grew close with during the last academic year, when they were in kindergarten.
Initial reports immediately after the shooting claimed that Nancy Lanza was a full time or even substitute teacher at the elementary school, though as the chaos of the day slowed, school officials said that she was not on any records of having worked there in any formal capacity.
That option leaves the possibility open that she volunteered her time with the young children.
That was echoed by Lillian Bittman, a former school board member who told the Wall Street Journal: “No one has heard of her. Teachers don’t know her.”
Though the court records will never back up the claim that Nancy Lanza was trying to have her son committed, her actions do lend credence to the idea because she had spent much time over the course of this year traveling to different schools to find a suitable place to send Adam.
Former babysitters of Adam Lanza’s said that she warned that she could never turn her back on the young boy, meaning that when she went to visit prospective schools, Adam was either with her or very aware of the fact that she had gone shopping for his next home.
In a Facebook conversation between Nancy Lanza and her former sister-in-law Marsha, Nancy revealed that she had wanted to downsize from her $1.4 million home in Newtown.
“I am still in the same place but getting to the point where I may want a smaller house. I travel a lot, spend time with friends, work with a couple of charities,” she wrote in one of the messages.
