Police: Body of gunman found at park

Associated Press

MOUNT RAINIER NATIONAL PARK, Wash.

An armed Iraq War veteran suspected of killing a Mount Rainier National Park ranger managed to evade snowshoe-wearing SWAT teams and dogs on his trail for nearly a day. He couldn’t, however, escape the cold.

A plane searching the remote wilderness for Benjamin Colton Barnes, 24, on Monday discovered his body lying partially submerged in an icy, snowy mountain creek with snow banks standing several feet high on either side.

“He was wearing a T-shirt, a pair of jeans and one tennis shoe. That was it,” Pierce County Sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer said.

Barnes did not have any external wounds and appears to have died due to the elements, he said. A medical examiner was at the scene to determine the cause of death. Troyer said two weapons were recovered, but he declined to say where they were located.

According to police and court documents, Barnes had a troubled transition to civilian life, with accusations in a child-custody dispute that he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder after his Iraq deployments and was suicidal.

The mother of his toddler daughter sought a temporary restraining order against him, according to court documents.

She alleged that he got easily irritated, angry and depressed and kept an arsenal of weapons in his home. She wrote that she feared for the child’s safety. Undated photos provided by police showed a shirtless, tattooed Barnes brandishing two large weapons.

The woman told authorities Barnes was suicidal and possibly suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder after deploying to Iraq in 2007-08, and had once sent her a text message saying “I want to die.”