The father of Idaho gunman Wess Roley once allegedly threatened to start a fire and shoot his family with a sniper rifle — eerily echoing the deadly crime his son carried out Sunday.
The chilling revelation came as it also surfaced that Roley, who killed two firefighters and critically injured a third, had hoped to become a smoke-eater himself, his grandpa said.
“He wanted to be a fireman — he was doing tree work, and he wanted to be a fireman in the forest,” the grandfather, Dale Roley, told CNN. “As far as I know, he was actually pursuing it.”
On Sunday, Roley, 20, set a blaze in the woods of Canfield Mountain near Coeur d’Alene, Idaho — then opened fire from a concealed position on responding firefighters.
Roley — who previously lived in Arizona and ran track in high school — was later found dead nearby from a gunshot wound.
The slaughter came a decade after Roley’s mother wrote in 2015 court papers that his father “threatened to sit outside my house with a sniper rifle or burn my house down,” CNN reported.
Roley’s granddad said he “had no reason to suspect that [his grandson] would be involved in something like this,” including because the killer had wanted to be a fireman.
“It wasn’t like he was a loner,” the grandfather added, explaining that Roley had a supportive family and friends.
He said the pair usually spoke about once a week but that they hadn’t talked in about a month because Roley had lost his phone.
About a decade earlier, during his parents’ messy divorce — which unfolded when Roley was 10 years old – a protective order barring his father from contacting his family was granted to his mother.
The mom said in court papers at the time that the father also shoved her to the ground and then “punched several holes in the walls.”
The father denied the claims of violence, insisting “I am not a danger to my son or anyone else” and that she “did not tell the truth in her statement,” documents showed.
