Coeur d’Alene Shooter

From Will Carless and Chris Kenning's 7-6-25 USA TODAY article entitled "Sketching Swastikas, Debating Politics and 'Edgy' Jokes: Idaho Shooter Not Typical Loner":

Wess Roley cultivated an image in middle and high school as an “edgy,” “cool” and funny kid who was interested in history, constantly talking about politics, and wanted to join the military, several former classmates told USA TODAY.

But he also had a darker side.

The young man accused of shooting and killing two firefighters in an attack in rural Idaho was “obsessed with guns,” the classmates said. He also had “Nazi tendencies.” Roley’s former classmates said he drew swastikas and pictures of guns in school books [...].

Roley’s childhood friends, some of whom attended multiple schools with him, said he was very political for his age and a Trump supporter – not unusual at the time in Phoenix, where 48% voted for him in 2016.

“He was very hardcore Trump – just very involved in politics,” [Elina] Pinkhasova said. “He was always very defensive, always getting into it with people, which we thought was kind of weird because we were 14, 15 years old.”

Roley’s old friends all said he was also obsessed with guns. Pinkhasova said she thought all the talk from Roley about guns was just part of his conservative ideology. 

“The Wess we knew was very interested in joining the Army,” said Pinkhasova. “Like, I thought his love for weapons was coming from the fact that he wanted to be a law enforcer of some sort.”

Former classmates said he came to school one day with a “buzz cut,” and said he wanted to join ROTC [...].

Roley moved to Idaho, where his father ran a tree-trimming service.

It was an area with an inauspicious history. For decades, the white supremacist organization Aryan Nations was headquartered there – until 2000, when a lawsuit by the Southern Poverty Law Center bankrupted the group [...].

While Coeur d’Alene, a city of over 57,000 has grown over the years and is also home to progressive residents, it sits in a conservative part of the state long associated with anti-government groups.

In 2022, 31 members of a White-nationalist group were arrested in the city and charged with conspiring to riot during a Pride event...

To read the entire article, click HERE.