Police were searching for a gunman who shot and killed a ranger yesterday after a routine traffic stop in Mount Rainier National Park, forcing authorities to close the park in Washington state, 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," Mr Bacher said. "We are now confirming that park ranger Margaret Anderson has been shot and killed at Mount Rainier National Park."
Authorities closed the park on the west side of the snow-capped Cascade mountain range, which receives about 2 million visitors a year, after the shooting and authorities were scouring the area for the gunman, a spokeswoman said.
The shooting came on an unseasonably mild New Year's holiday when visitors flocked to the park, about 80 miles (130 km)southeast of Seattle, for popular winter activities including snowboarding and cross-country skiing, she said.
About 85 visitors and 15 park staff were being held inside a visitor center until it was deemed safe to leave, spokeswoman Lee Taylor said.
"They're safe and secure where they are," she 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."
Andrew Bunning, a front desk clerk at the 25-room National Park Inn, where park visitors often stay, told Reuters all park visitors including hotel guests were on lockdown.
A Pierce County sheriff's spokesman told Seattle KIRO-7 television 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 armour.
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 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 give a motive for the shooting or say why rangers tried to stop the gunman's car. The FBI was assisting in the manhunt, park officials said.
Park authorities described Ms Anderson as a committed public servant who was married to another ranger at the national park.
Reuters