After massive hunt, California ‘killer’ cop believed dead

As police scoured mountain peaks for days, using everything from bloodhounds to high-tech helicopters, the revenge-seeking former Los Angeles police officer they wanted was hiding among them, holed up in a vacation cabin across the street from their command post.

It was there that Christopher Dorner, 33, apparently took refuge last Thursday, four days after beginning a deadly rampage that would claim four lives.

The search ended abruptly Tuesday when a man believed to be Dorner bolted from hiding, stole two cars, barricaded himself in a vacant cabin and mounted a last stand in a furious shootout in which he killed one sheriff's deputy and wounded another before the building erupted in flames. Hours later a charred body was found inside. "We have reason to believe that it is him,'' San Bernardino County sheriff's spokeswoman Cynthia Bachman said.

His apparent end came very close to where his trail went cold six days earlier when his burning pickup truck, with guns and camping gear inside, was abandoned on a road in the San Bernardino National Forest near the ski resort town of Big Bear Lake. His footprints led away from the truck and vanished on frozen soil.

With no sign of him, police offered a $1 million reward to bring him to justice and end a "reign of terror'' that had over 50 families of targeted Los Angeles police officers under round-the-clock protection after he threatened to bring "warfare'' to the LAPD, officers and their kin over his 'unjust' firing.

Just a few hours after police announced Tuesday that they had fielded more than 1,000 tips with no sign of Dorner, word came that a man matching his description had tied up two people in a Big Bear Lake cabin, stole their car and fled.

Once spotted by wardens in a white pickup, California Department of Fish and Wildlife spokesperson Lt. Patrick Foy said, Dorner opened fire, striking a warden's truck. One of the wardens shot at the suspect as he rounded a curve in the road. It's unclear if he hit him, but the pickup crashed in the snow. Dorner then ran on foot to the cabin where he barricaded himself and got in a shootout with the police. Two deputies were shot, one fatally.

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