Police searching the burnt ruins of a Washington home where a man -- possibly a white separatist -- fired shots at law enforcement officers for more than an hour on Wednesday recovered two dead bodies today.
The house was set alight by a man inside who used an arsenal of powerful rifles and handguns to keep firefighters and police at bay for 90 minutes with a barrage of shots, The Colombian reports.
The home in Washougal belonged to Steven Douglas Stanbary, who The Colombian reports was a white separatist who called Randy Weaver, an anti-government militant in Idaho, his "hero."
Stanbary was convicted in Idaho in 1995 of threatening to kill his wife and children and possessing a huge cache of firearms. It's unclear if Stanbary was the shooter in yesterday's standoff.
His daughter, his wife and her sister lived at the home too. Police said it could take weeks before tests reveal who died in the blaze.
The fire preceded the shooting, reports said. Bystanders who checked out the burning house at 8 a.m. were sent scurrying by a salvo of gunshots.
One officer suffered minor injuries from a bullet shot through his police car's window, The Daily Astorian says. Police did not return fire, a report by The Associated Press says.
Investigators combed the area on Thursday looking for the shooter's remains, according to The Associated Press. Authorities weren't positive the gunman perished in the blaze that burned the home to ground, but a SWAT team surrounded the three-story structure during the shooting and don't believe that anyone escaped, the AP says.
A dog, apparently killed by gunshots, was recovered from the rubble.
When Stanbary was sentenced to three months in jail for assault in Idaho, police who raided his home found two dozen weapons, including six AK-47s and a grenade launcher, reports said.
A man who worked for Stanbary in Washougal told the AP that his boss sympathized with Weaver, a white separatist who fought federal agents in a deadly showdown in Ruby Ridge, a remote part of Idaho, in 1992.