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Subscribe to RSSKaren and Jim Reynolds, the couple who accidentally stumbled upon fugitive Christopher Dorner, describe finding him, being tied-up, what he said to them, and their eventual escape.
The chase, shootout, standoff and inferno that ended the search for ex-LAPD officer Christopher Dorner began when a married couple startled the suspect in his mountainside hideout.
When Karen and Jim Reynolds arrived to tidy their rental cabin not far from a police command post, they found the alleged cop killer holed up inside.
“He said four or five times that he didn't have a problem with us, he just wanted to clear his name,” said Jim Reynolds at a press conference late Wednesday. “He said I don't have a problem with you so I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I didn't believe him, I thought he was going to kill us,” he added.
Dorner, the target of the biggest manhunt in LAPD history, then tied them up, swiped their purple Nissan Rogue SUV and left.
"We haven't really been told what's happened to it," said Karen Reynolds.
Dorner might have had a chance to flee the Big Bear ski resort area where scores of police had conducted a door-to-door search for him — except Karen Reynolds got free, called 911 and alerted cops that a man who looked like Dorner was on the run, the officials said.
After a long manhunt culminating in gunfire and a cabin set ablaze, the search for accused murderer and ex-cop Christopher Dorner seems to have ended. Police say the charred body found inside the cabin was unrecognizable, but they claim there is no doubt their suspect is dead. NBC's Miguel Almaguer reports.
"What we did was kind of scoot our way — I went up and she went down," said Jim Reynolds. "then she got her gag off and then we both worked on trying to stand up."
Earlier reports, based on statements from law enforcement officials, indicated that it was a pair of housekeepers who had been tied up by the suspect.
"We really very much wanted to clarify things," said Karen Reynolds, "but, it was taking us a whole lot of time to get over the trauma too and, like even by the time all the police were gone last night you guys [reporters] arrived immediately and, wasn't, we never slept for one second, since this happened."
The 911 call set in motion a dramatic and tragic chain of events in which one sheriff’s deputy was killed in a gun battle outside a second cabin where the suspect’s charred body would be found before the day’s end.
“It was like a war zone and our deputies continued to go in to that area,” San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon said at a press conference Wednesday afternoon. “The rounds kept coming, but our deputies didn’t give up.”
Police have not officially determined that the corpse found in the burned-out county was Dorner, who kept southern California in fear for a week as, authorities say, he carried out a murderous campaign of revenge against the LAPD. They are waiting for forensics.
The San Bernardino Sheriff’s office has said they don’t believe the gunman who barricaded himself inside the cabin escaped before it erupted in flames.
“We believe that this investigation is over at this point and we’ll need to move on from here,” said McMahon.
McMahon said police did not intentionally set the cabin ablaze, but the pyrotechnic tear gas canisters — commonly referred to as “burners,” he said — generate a high level of heat.
It was when police began using the pyrotechnic canisters to flush out the suspect that the fire began.
The charred remains of the cabin where ex-cop Christopher Dorner was believed to have been holed up.
The LAPD, which had been under a series of tactical alerts while Dorner was on the lam has returned to normal operations on Wednesday, although a dozen people on hit list remained under guard, said Lt. Andy Neiman.
"Thanks to the brave men and women of the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department, it looks like we have our man," Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" early Wednesday.
Investigators had been combing the ski resort area since Thursday, when Dorner’s burned out Nissan truck was found there hours after he allegedly ambushed cops in two cities, killing Officer Michael Crain.
Days earlier, police believe, Dorner executed the daughter of a retired police captain and her fiancé in Irvine to kick off a killing spree that sowed fear across the region and in the ranks of law-enforcement.
After the man believed to be Dorner fled the cabin where he had encountered the couple, wardens from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife spotted the purple Nissan and gave chase.
The suspect lost them and, it appears, ditched the Nissan and carjacked a white pickup.
Rick Heltebrake, 61, told TODAY on Wednesday that he was driving near the Boy Scout camp he operates when a heavily armed man he recognized as Dorner, 33, crawled out of the woods, pointing a rifle at him.
He said the hulking former Navy reservist was wearing camouflage and a ballistics vest and told Heltebrake, “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“He was dressed for action,” Heltebrake said.
Dorner commandeered the pickup, but let the man and his dog go. Shortly after Dorner sped off, Heltebrake heard gunshots.
That may have been the brief exchange of fire between Dorner and another game warden who spotted the pickup and pursued it. The warden’s truck was riddled with bullets, but he was not hurt, officials said.
Dorner then “fled into the forest and barricaded himself inside a cabin,” the San Bernardino Sheriff’s office said. “A short time later there was an exchange of gunfire between law enforcement and the suspect.”
KNBC-TV
Det. Jeremiah MacKay, 35, was killed on Feb. 12, 2013, after exchanging gunfire with a man believed to be a fugitive ex-police officer accused of a revenge-motivated shooting spree.
Two deputies were shot and taken to Loma Linda University Hospital, where officials later confirmed sheriff’s deputy Jeremiah MacKay had died and another had surgery but was expected to survive.
MacKay, 35, joined the department in 1998 and was father to a 7-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son.
“Our department is grieving from this event,” said McMahon.
No further shots were fired from the Angelus Oaks cabin before police began to storm the building, according to a sheriff’s spokesman.
Deputies smashed the cabin’s windows, fired in tear gas, and tore through the structure’s walls using an armored personnel carrier, a source close to the probe told NBCLosAngeles.com. A single gunshot then rang out, according to the source, and flames and smoke began to emerge from the remains of the building.
It was hours before police were able to enter the cabin and find the body. Investigators continued to scour the crime scene Wednesday as other police gathered in Riverside for the funeral of Officer Crain.
San Bernardino, Calif., County Sheriff John McMahon says that the sheriff's department did not intentionally burn down a California mountain cabin where Christopher Dorner is believed to have died. Watch the entire news conference.
Neiman said it was difficult to celebrate the apparent end to the rampage given the loss of four lives, two of them lawmen.
“This has been a very trying time,” he said. “To hear those words ‘officer down’ is the most gut-wrenching experience you can have as a police officer,” Neiman said.
Additional reporting by Andrew Rafferty
This story was originally published on Wed Feb 13, 2013 6:20 PM EST
Leave a Comment:
Get armed.
Even the good guys can be bad.
This is America..I have been called a honky..white trash....you think i should kill a black person because of it..we live in a racist nation live with it...
Elvis Payne u must be instigating such cruel and derogatory language. I am a 42 year old African American born in Southern California and lived through out the U.S. even South east and have never been called, at least within ears reach, a racist name. America may have a long way to go but it has left behind a great deal of its racist past. Time for those like you to catch up.
There is just something not right with this entire story. It plays out like a movie; of corruptions, cover up, framing, extortion and a setup from hell. People died, but do we really know who killed them??? Who better to frame a guy, than the LAPD???!!! Who better to cover up all their wrong doing than the LAPD???!!! This whole thing just is way too convenient for the LAPD. Should any of us really believe everything we are told??? LAPD has a lot to loose if this guy’s story was correct. There is a fine line between good and evil and cops walk that line every single day.
yeah we should kill because i call you a n-gger huh
Kim from Utah
This plays out like a movie? I think you watched too many of them. After 4 years this guy now decides to reap his perverted sense of justice, and the cops now are killing an innocent woman and fiancee and one of their own, and attempting to kill some others, to frame this guy?
Of course there are corrupt police; there are corrupt teachers, clergymen, politicians, business owners and next-door-neighbors. But to think that they all would band together and kill all these people just to take down one person is ludicrous. What ia wrong with everyone today? Where is this mass socital paranoia coming from?
big bad bear goes down as a wimp..shoots himself..coward
What makes you suppose he shot himself?
What makes YOU think he didn't?
I'm not supposing anything. I don't know who shot him or even if he was shot.
culheath
If I may answer that question, I think (operative word) was that would make the most sense. He didn't stand a chance of clearing his name now; he was surrounded by police, and it was only a matter of time before he ran out of ammo. I think (again operative word) that the police would rather take him alive, see him in shackles, thrown in the slammer and sentenced to death after a trial. I don't know who started the fire, but if the intention was to smoke him out, then he would have had to exit the cabin to save his life, or take his own life so they did not have the victory of doing it.
jerseyshoremarie,
I agree with the likelihood of your first assessment, though not the second.
Good post.
You have to read the manifesto to understand why he did what he did, I am glad I do not live in LA.
he could have been a cop somewhere else right??
Somewhere less corrupt? Yeah probably.
He could have taken different avenues too.
But he didn't..
elvis payne
I am not sure if he would be hired by any other department; he didn't last out his probationary period, and was already labeled as either a liar or a whistle-blower.
exactly remember the officer on the news telling the world they are a tight group, they live with a special code and band together. He was a whistle-blower no job... He turned in a superior and broke the code...
We must ban tear gas canisters! They are too dangerous. They start fires which then kill people. Remember the Branch Davidian Camp in Waco, Texas?
Chris
Stop boring people with the same old stupid statements. They are not original, clever, or even relevant here.
Damn shame any way you look at it.
I smell bacon.....
That's what they said while the cabin was burning.
I think you can tell by reading his manifesto that the man was unhinged. He bragged about being able to pull his murder plans off, but he planned poorly and reacted instead of executing a plan to remain hidden.
Clearly a sign of rage and mental deficiency.
Cold blooded murder is not a sane solution.
In the matter of the LAPD, kill a cop and you will rarely see a court room. This is a fact of life in any city.
LAPD will most likely have to deal with the fallout of that "tradition".
to bad we let people get to court rooms that should have bullet in the head and be done with it.
face it if not for killing a cop ---nobody would have done anything--gangs kill cops but cops are on the payroll
so nothing happens---pretty sad.
If we bypassed due process with a bullet, our system would be akin to countries like Iran. You wanna be a part of that?
LAPD will most likely have to deal with the fallout of that "tradition".
Why? When you consider that as the increased crime and violence resulting in lack of border control the police are in fact in a war zone everyday. What is the first rule of the U.S. military .... no one is left behind. That includes retribution for the death of a fellw officer (soldier). This Dorner evidently had some mental problems and was hired anyway .... lack of proper screening? A marginal affirmative action quota hire? We will never know, but my guess is the second. It is way past time to end affirmative action so the public can have confidence that no matter what the race, color, religion, gender or place of origin of the person they are dealing with is the best person for the job ... especially in a government position.
Why? Because police don't cotton to cop killers and will most likely kill the cop killer before they ever see a court room.
I fail to see the connection between border control and ex cops killing cops. WTF.
No one left behind means get your dead and wounded, not revenge. Silly.
Yes, he had mental issues but your effort to link that to an anti affirmative action position is really weak.
It could just as easily have been a white guy that went off his nut.
I think you have other issues to debate and are choosing this forum to air you grievances. Pick a more apt article for that. This one ain't it.
"holed" up inside ... really? :|
He certainly wasn't "wholed" up after the shooting was done.
A man who claim was wrongly accused...yep sounds just like a guilty black man..they could not save..from the court system..yell and scream..but stole the TV
What's black got to do with it?
Do tell.
LJ..that's why he went on a shooting spree...black and wrongly accused they say...do tell huh
First, who pays for the burned down house? Second, I wonder what Piers Morgan and the rest of the liberal
limp wrists think? This guy idolized them! Oh wait, who give a Sh#t what piers morgan or any other UKer has say or think!
You obviously don't know much about Piers Morgan except what the gun-obsessed people in the USA falsely say about him. He is not a kiss-your-ass interviewer like Oprah Winfrey. I doubt Lance Armstrong would have gone on Piers' show to "confess" that his accolades as to his being a world-class athelete were falsely earned.
All the time and $$$$ spent to get a cop killer---if not for killing a cop --the cops could care less.
They are on the payroll of the drug gangs---that kill people daily-and nobody does anything.
what a joke this whole deal was---Dorner did not do the right things --but chances are was telling the truth
in the beginning and the corruption of the police is what made him go off the deep end.
We send people 1/2 way around the world to kill bad guys--but in our own towns -let gangs run wild????
What happened to the reports that the suspect tried to exit the burning cabin but was shoved back inside? That was widely reported last night but today it's gone.
Curious thing that.
I think the term used was "pushed back." Pushed back doesn't mean someone put their hand on him and pushed, it means that he found his way blocked by armed police and "fell back" into the house.
I don't know everything, but I do think anyone who thinks about it would realize that this guy was a danger to the police around that cabin, he shot hundreds of rounds at police and had killed a deputy already. I am not in favor of cops killing people, but if you engage in a shoot-out with police, you are likely to lose that particular battle. I imagine that once he figured out that he was not going to escape, and if the burners (tear gas canisters) started coming in, he shot himself.
I find it interesting that he had 40 or 50 people he held a grudge against, yet did not go after any of them. He went after an unarmed couple and he ambushed a couple of cops from another town in those first few days. He was not doing much to harm the people he hated, except for killing the unarmed daughter of someone he thought didn't defend him well enough. He was nothing more than a sorry crybaby. If he's dead, it isn't much of a loss.
Just because he's dead is no reason to go back on the pledge to take an unbiased look at the original complaint. I have no sympathy for him but would like his complaints to be reinvestigated.
These two gals just earned themselves a million bucks.
I'd rather he were still alive, but I prefer it's him dead than yet another person.
Regardless, there's something that doesn't seem quite right about the story:
Which is it? It shouldn't be too difficult to determine whether he kept firing or not.
people are supporting him bcause there are so many years of police corruption. I would bet a bag of donuts this guy was a so gun ho over the foce and loved it......... When he seen them lie to screw him over with his job loss was too much for him.. the sad part the truth will not ever ever come out.... if the truth came out there would be so many law suites. they will blame all on the dead guy........
The bright spot in this whole ordeal is the self-executing murderer!
I wish more of them would take that route so we don't have to keep them on death row for decades on the taxpayer's dime!
That sounds like a pretty good tip to me, give her the Million Bucks.
There may well be validity to his story, I don't doubt it for a second.....but people are fired from their job (career) every day but they don't start killing people...(well, some do).
He had choices, he just made the wrong ones!! He certainly wasn't a model citizen or cop and last but not least, he
had the opportunity to surrender but turned "chicken s--t". If you can't take the heat in the cabin, get out!!
Wonder if the housecleaners are eligible for the $1 Million since their phone call led to the "capture" and "arrest" of Dorner. Bet they don't get paid....
Beg to differ - they will get paid - count on it - also note capture also means dead or alive in this case dead.
I thought the reward was for information leading to an "arrest and conviction". Lapd is gonna weisel their way out of paying.
He had southern California in fear, BS he had the LAPD and their cronies @!$%#ting bricks, this must be investigated by an independent source, not the thugs with badges.
Whats to investigate? The first time he murdered another person the time for investigation ended
Glad he is dead and not taking up time and space. Bet many bottom feeder lawyers are crying and all sad they couldn't get him and drag it out for decades while they tell their lies and make him out to be the victim here. He was a coward that took innocent lives because he couldn't get what he wanted. Hope he suffered before meeting his maker.
You are definately a product of government spoon-fed education. You are exactly the parrot they wanted you to be. But even a parasite like you could change your mind once you became a sad victim of the LAPD. Then you'd be the one crying for support. Perhaps then Dorner's plight would be more understandable. Gack!