YOU’RE TOAST: Ex-cop Christopher Jordan Dorner, in his Navy days (left) and somewhere amid the flaming remains of his California cabin hideout. (Reuters)
Murderous ex-cop Christopher Jordan Dorner wanted to go out in a blaze of glory — and the sheriff’s deputies who surrounded his California mountain hideout provided the flames.
The San Bernardino County cops torched the wooden cabin with highly flammable “incendiary tear gas” as Dorner took refuge Tuesday, apparently burning him to a crisp.
“Burn this motherf–ker!” one officer shouted as they had Dorner — who had earlier killed a deputy and seriously wounded another — pinned down in the cabin, according to police radio transmissions.
Amid sounds of gunfire, voices can be head shouting, “Burn it down!” and “Shoot the gas!”
The transmissions led to questions about whether the deputies burned Dorner intentionally. Last night, Sheriff John McMahon insisted that not the case.
“We did not intentionally burn down that cabin to get Mr. Dorner out,” he said yesterday.
The sheriff admitted to using incendiary tear-gas canisters but added that the cause of the fire is under investigation.
During the showdown in Big Bear Lake, the SWAT team was under a barrage of gunfire from Dorner, 33, an ace Navy marksman wielding a sniper rifle and a seemingly unlimited supply of ammo.
Cops had first fired traditional tear gas into the cabin, but that didn’t flush out the man wanted for three murders in a vengeful war on the LAPD over his 2008 dismissal, officials said.
That’s when they opted for the more powerful CS gas canisters, the type used in the 1993 Branch Davidian standoff in Waco, Texas.
Dorner “put himself in that position,” a police official told The Los Angeles Times. “There weren’t a lot of options.”
As the cabin burned to the ground, a single gunshot was heard. A charred body was found inside along with Dorner’s driver’s license, authorities said. But a positive identification could be weeks away.
Throughout the drama, Dorner’s mother was in the La Capilla Mexican Restaurant in La Palma, watching the standoff on TV.
Dorner went on the run on Feb. 6, when the LAPD connected the slayings of a former police captain’s daughter and her fiancé to his crazed online manifesto,
Dorner turned up in Big Bear Lake Tuesday, when he tied up a husband and wife and made off with their purple Nissan.
“I thought he was going to kill us,” said the husband, Jim Reynolds, at a press conference last night.
His wife, Karen, managed to escape and call 911, which sparked two car chases that ultimately ended with Dorner in the cabin.