LOS ANGELES (CNN) — Arguably the most wanted man in America, fired police Officer Christopher Jordan Dorner may well be in hiding — plotting his next move after allegedly killing three people. Officers toting high-powered weapons fanned out Friday across thousands of square miles, searching for their former colleague.
Some in the public are even calling him a hero.
Police zeroed in on a mountain resort town west of Los Angeles where searchers Thursday found Dorner’s burned-out pickup truck. An approaching storm threatened to hinder the already difficult search.
The 270-pound former Navy lieutenant and fired Los Angeles officer promised to bring “unconventional and asymmetrical warfare” to police officers and their families, calling it the “last resort” to clear his name and get back at a department that he claims mistreated him.
Dorner, 33, is wanted in the killing of two people in Irvine, California, on Sunday and in the shooting of three Los Angeles-area police officers Thursday, which killed one of them.
One of the victims of the Irvine killings, Monica Quan, was the daughter of the retired police officer who represented Dorner in his efforts to get his job back, police have confirmed.
Where police see a violent killer, others think of Dorner as kind of an epic anti-hero waging war against an institution they see as corrupt.
“God bless you Chris #Dorner,” one Twitter user posted. “I believe in what goes around comes around. The LAPD is crooked.”
Another tweeter said Dorner was wrong, but the “#LAPD has done much worse things than he has.”
“My opinion of the suspect is unprintable,” Riverside police Chief Sergio Diaz said, hours after one of his officers was killed. “The manifesto, I think, speaks for itself (as) evidence of a depraved and abandoned mind and heart.”
Here’s what is known so far:
— Dorner, who worked as a Los Angeles Police Department officer from 2005 to 2008, is accused of killing Quan and her fiance Sunday in Irvine, then shooting two Riverside, California, police officers and an LAPD officer Thursday. Police say he unleashed numerous rounds at the Riverside officers, riddling their car with bullets and killing a 34-year-old officer. The second officer in the car was seriously wounded, and the LAPD officer suffered only minor injuries, police said.
— In a lengthy letter provided by police, Dorner said he had been unfairly fired by the LAPD after reporting another officer for police brutality. He decried what he called a continuing culture of racism and violence within the department, and called attacks on police and their families “a necessary evil that I do not enjoy but must partake and complete for substantial change to occur within the LAPD and reclaim my name.”
— Leads have taken police from Los Angeles to San Diego to Las Vegas to the California mountain resort town of Big Bear, where police found Dorner’s widely sought gray pickup, thoroughly burned. Despite door-to-door searches and a constant presence since Thursday, police had found no trace of him Friday.
— The LAPD and other agencies have gone to extremes to protect officers. Forty teams of officers were guarding people named as targets in Dorner’s letter. On Thursday, one of the teams shot at a pickup that resembled Dorner’s but turned out to be a Los Angeles Times newspaper delivery vehicle.
— Despite Dorner’s statement in the letter that “when the truth comes out, the killing stops,” Los Angeles police Chief Charlie Beck said authorities don’t plan to apologize to Dorner or clear his name. Dorner’s firing, Beck said Thursday, had already been “thoroughly reviewed.”
— In Nevada on Thursday, FBI agents searched Dorner’s Las Vegas home. The search forced some of Dorner’s neighbors out of their homes for several hours, CNN affiliate KLAS reported.
“It’s too close to home. It’s kind of scary,” neighbor Dan Gomez told KLAS.
