Wess Roley, Couer d’Alene, Idaho sniper left drawings of himself dying days a violent death, days before ambush attack along with a goodbye letter for his former military vet father who he had an estranged relationship with.
The Idaho sniper accused of ambushing and fatally gunning down two Coeur d’Alene firefighters and injuring a third last month left drawings of himself dying along with a goodbye letter to his father foretelling of his imminent death.
Wess Roley’s final moments were revealed by the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office during a press conference on Tuesday, three weeks after the June 29th ambushing shooting.
Multiple images were shared depicting crude sketches of Roley with gunshot wounds and even a Pentagram on his forehead, including one he titled ‘Goodbye Wess,’ KXLY reported.
Kootenai County Sheriff Bob Norris showed on a screen drawings that investigators found in Roley’s apartment on Sherman Avenue.
One of the drawings appeared to show several stick figures and the words “kill, kill, kill.”
Sheriff Norris said the drawing depicts the scene of the crime, appearing to show the parking lot at Canfield Mountain where firefighters encountered Roley and asked him to move his truck.
There was also a drawing of a man that appeared to have a shotgun pointed at his own chin and the words “into the void” and “goodbye Wess.”
Roley shot himself at the scene and was found with a shotgun underneath him.
Investigators also found a handwritten letter in the sniper’s truck riddled with spelling and grammatical mistakes that Roley wrote to his father at the scene on Canfield Mountain, where he intentionally set a fire and waited just a few yards away for firefighters to arrive before opening fire, killing two and injuring a third.
‘Hello Father, I write this to you in a concerned effort that you may read this in upmost sincerity. Tomorrow I shall go into battle if I survive, it would be with upmost dishonor. I bid thee farewell, I hope that you shall live to the fullest extent as you have thus far,’ Roley wrote according to the Spokesman Review.
‘I beg that you do not fall into the traps of modern existence, with media and other false pleasantries that plague the minds of individuals today. Propaganda of sorts. You are a upstanding individual and I wish you the best.’
The letter echoed Roley’s posts on social media during the hours leading up to the shooting, including one saying he was “going hunting.”
Prior reports told of the 20 year old displaying ‘disturbed’ patterns behavior when he was still just a teenager, including doodle Swastikas and weapons in his notebooks at school, according to investigators.
Former classmates described Roley as anti-social, with one former classmate saying, ‘We were all pretty scared of him.’
Just one month before his deadly attack, Roley tried to apply to be a firefighter at the Coeur d’Alene Fire Department — the very station he would attack.
During the application process, Roley, who had a history of unmedicated ADHD and marijuana use he struggled to quit, quickly ‘became agitated with the process and left frustrated,’ Kootenai County Sheriff Bob Norris said.
He also tried to enlist in the US Army three times, but consistently neglected to follow up on required tasks and appointments, which led to his disqualification, KREM reported.
Many of the documents recovered during the ongoing investigation — including the shared letter and drawings — are still being reviewed, Norris said.
Of note, Roley’s father previously threatened to set a fire and shoot his family with a sniper rifle during messy divorce proceedings in 2015. A protective order was put in place at his mother’s request, barring the father from contacting the family.
The father, Jason Roley, a former army veteran covered in a motley of body tattoos would later tell reporters he wasn’t aware of his son having any weapons or what led to his son turning to violence.
It would later be revealed that the father and son had been estranged in the last year, with Wes Roley turning to live in his car in the wild.
