It is breaking news that a manhunt on Mt. Ranier Washington is in response to the shooting of a park ranger. The latest report from King 5 News
Detectives are looking for 24-year-old Benjamin Colton Barnes as their person of interest.
"We don't know much about him other than he has some weapons training and he has some pretty high-end weapons," said Ed Troyer of Pierce Co. Sheriff's Dept. "He was up here ... it looks like, by the items that were in the car, he planned on being up here, maybe even hiding out up here."
The suspect is believed to be armed with several rifles.
This sanitized version is also found on CNN
Compare this to information available about the suspected gunman on BBC News
The suspected gunman, Benjamin Colton Barnes, 24, has also been linked to an earlier shooting at a New Year's party.
The US Marine is reported to have post-traumatic stress disorder. The gunman is said to have been suicidal and was possibly suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder following his deployments to Iraq in 2007-08, according to an affidavit submitted by the mother of his child.
She sought a temporary restraining order against Mr Barnes during a custody dispute in July 2011.
Mr Barnes gets easily irritated, angry and depressed, she added, saying he keeps a variety of weapons in his home.
The BBC published this photo of Barnes.
The mental health of our returning soldiers is national concern that should not be swept under the rug. Let's get the awareness out there and provide the best care possible for those damaged by our forever wars.
Don't let the media get away with airbushing over the damage to the human spirit that our decade of war is bringing home.
Ft. Lewis PTSD Epidemic
The base, an hour or so south of Seattle, was named by the government-owned, independent news source Stars and Stripes last year as the most troubled in the military, thanks to an “incredible” number of incidents rooted in post-traumatic stress disorder, says Joseph Carter, a former Army sergeant with two Iraq tours under his belt.
The jarring incidents include one of the soldiers Carter served with: Sheldon Plummer, sentenced to 14 years in prison last August for murdering his wife and stuffing her body into a storage crate after his return from a third deployment in Iraq. Another incident involved an Iraq and Afghanistan soldier who allegedly set fire to his wife, and yet another soldier was convicted of waterboarding his own daughter because she didn’t know her ABCs. The Afghan kill team, which came to symbolize wanton military violence after a three-month killing spree perpetrated against innocent Afghan civilians, was from Lewis-McChord too.
There’s definitely something going on here at Lewis-McChord that’s not being taken care of,” Carter said.
It’s not just at this one base. Military suicides are up nationwide, according to an Army report released last month that showed more soldiers took their lives in the month of July than in any month over the prior two years. This came on the heels of a small decline in active-duty suicides in 2010, the first drop since 2005. As of the report’s publishing, the Army was investigating 98 potential suicides among active-duty soldiers this year alone, along with 53 potential suicides for soldiers in the Reserves. In 2010, Army suicides among active-duty Reserve and National Guard soldiers increased to 301, from 242 the year before.