Mount Rainier National Park ranger killed, gunman loose (Reuters)

SEATTLE (Reuters) ? A heavily armed gunman shot and killed a ranger in Mount Rainier National Park on Sunday after fleeing a traffic stop, and authorities closed the park in Washington state as a manhunt got underway, officials said.

With the gunman on the loose, scores of visitors were trapped in the park on the west side of the snow-capped Cascade mountain range and were preparing to hunker down for the night, park officials said.

The ranger, a 34-year-old mother of two young children, was killed after she stopped the gunman's vehicle at a roadblock shortly after another ranger tried to stop the same car about a mile away, park spokesman Kevin Bacher said in a statement.

"The suspect fled and is still at-large on foot," Bacher said. "We are now confirming that park ranger Margaret Anderson has been shot and killed at Mount Rainier National Park."

The shooting came on an unseasonably mild New Year's holiday that saw visitors flock to the park, which welcomes around 2 million visitors a year, for popular winter activities including snowboarding and cross-country skiing.

Those trapped after nightfall in the park, about 80 miles southeast of Seattle, included about 125 visitors and 18 staff who were being held inside a visitor center until it was deemed safe to leave,

"They're safe and secure where they are," park spokeswoman Lee Taylor said. "I don't know how long we're going to ask them to stay there. We certainly don't want them driving down the road if there's a gunman who might take a pot shot at them."

Ranger Lee Snook said the visitors would sleep on the concrete floor in the Jackson Visitor Center's basement, and were sustaining themselves on pizza and hot dogs from the center's cafe.

"It's probably not going to be a comfortable night, but we have food, water, heat, and it's the best option," Snook said.

Outside, law enforcement officers were using infrared equipment that can detect body heat to hunt down the gunman, but Snook said it had been deemed too risky to move out the stranded visitors.

ON LOCKDOWN, BUT GETTING FED

Andrew Bunning, a front desk clerk at the 25-room National Park Inn where park visitors often stay, told Reuters that all park visitors including hotel guests were on lockdown.

"Everyone is staying safe," Bunning said. "Right now, we're trying to get everyone fed."

A Pierce County sheriff's spokesman told Seattle's KIRO-7 news that law enforcement had named Benjamin Colton Barnes, 24, as a person of interest who could be involved in the shooting and who may be heavily armed with assault rifles and body armor.

The King County Sheriff's office said the same man was also wanted for questioning in a shooting at a New Year's party earlier in the day at a house in Skyway, just outside of Seattle, in which four people were shot and wounded.

"Witnesses said multiple persons at the party were armed and had a "show and tell" with their guns," the sheriff's office said in a statement, adding that a shootout erupted following an argument over a weapon.

Numerous rounds were fired but the sheriff's department said authorities did not know how many people fired their weapons or who had initiated the gunfire. Three people fled the scene before police arrived.

Detectives had managed to locate two of those people and had been working with the family of the third to persuade him to come forward and talk to police, but later learned that he had been named as a person of interest in the park shooting.

Officials could not say why rangers had tried to stop the gunman's car at the 368-square-mile national park, home to two national park lodges. The FBI was assisting in the manhunt, park officials said.

Park authorities described Anderson, the ranger who was killed, as a committed public servant who was married to another ranger.

"So it's a horrible tragedy. It's a terrible loss of life of somebody who had dedicated herself to serving the public," the park spokeswoman, Taylor, told CNN.

(Additional reporting by Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Tim Gaynor)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120102/us_nm/us_death_ranger

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