Former Los Angeles police officer, Christopher Dorner, is believed dead following a weeklong search for him. He is the suspect in several murders believed to have been performed as revenge against the Los Angeles Police Department and its employees. Dorner, a black man, complained of racism within the department.?
In this aerial photo, law enforcement authorities investigate the charred remains of a cabin Wednesday, where quadruple-murder suspect Christopher Dorner is believed to have died after barricading himself inside during a Tuesday stand-off with police in Big Bear, Calif.
AP Photo/The Sun, John Valenzuela
EnlargeThere was no question. The man standing before Rick Heltebrake on a rural mountain road was Christopher?Dorner.
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Clad in camouflage from head to toe and wearing a bulletproof vest packed with ammunition, the most wanted man in America over the last week was just a few feet away, having emerged from a grove of trees holding a large, assault-style rifle.
As teams of officers who had sought the fugitive ex-Los Angeles police officer since last week were closing in, Dorner?pointed the gun at Heltebrake and ordered him to get out of his truck.
"I don't want to hurt you. Start walking and take your dog," Heltebrake recalled?Dorner?saying during the carjacking Tuesday.
The man, who wasn't lugging any gear, got into the truck and drove away. Heltebrake, with his 3-year-old Dalmatian Suni in tow, called police when he heard a volley of gunfire erupt soon after, and then hid behind a tree.
A short time later, police caught up with the man they believe was?Dorner, surrounding a cabin in which he had taken refuge after crashing Heltebrake's truck 80 miles east of Los Angeles. A gunfight ensued in which one sheriff's deputy was killed and another wounded.
Then, as the gunfire ended, the cabin erupted in flames.
San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon said Wednesday his deputies did not intentionally burn down the cabin. His deputies shot pyrotechnic tear gas into the cabin, and it erupted in flames, he said.
McMahon did not say directly that the tear gas started the blaze, and the cause of the fire remained unclear.
A charred body was found in the basement, along with a wallet and personal items, including a California driver's license with the name Christopher?Dorner, an official briefed on the investigation told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing probe.
McMahon said authorities have not positively identified the remains.
Recalling his encounter, Heltebrake said Wednesday that he wasn't panicked in his meeting with?Dorner because he didn't feel the fugitive wanted to hurt him. "He wasn't wild-eyed, just almost professional," he said. "He was on a mission."
"It was clear I wasn't part of his agenda and there were other people down the road that were part of his agenda," he said.
Dorner, 33, had said in a rant that authorities believe he posted on Facebook last week that he expected to die, with the police chasing him, as he embarked on a campaign of revenge against the Los Angeles Police Department for firing him.
The apparent end came in the same mountain range where?Dorner's?trail went cold six days earlier, after his pickup truck ? with guns and camping gear inside ? was found abandoned and on fire near the ski resort town of Big Bear Lake.
His footprints led away from the truck and vanished on frozen soil.
Deputies searched door-to-door in the city of Big Bear Lake and then, in a blinding snowstorm, SWAT teams with bloodhounds and high-tech equipment in tow focused on scouring hundreds of vacant cabins in the forest outside of town.
Authorities for the most part looked at cabins boarded up for the winter, said Dan Sforza, assistant chief of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and often didn't enter occupied homes where nothing appeared amiss.
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