SALON

Tuesday, Jan 10, 2012 9:27 PM UTC

Thousands Celebrate Life Of Slain Wash. Ranger

By

Topics: From the Wires,

Thousands Celebrate Life Of Slain Wash. RangerIn this photo made with an iPhone, a sign is shown posted at a candlelight vigil, Sunday, Jan. 8, 2012, in Eatonville, Wash., in memory of Park ranger Margaret Anderson, who was killed by a gunman during a traffic stop at Mount Rainier National Park a week ago. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)(Credit: AP)

TACOMA, Wash. (AP) — Top federal officials, fellow park rangers and thousands of well-wishers have gathered in Washington state to celebrate the life of Margaret Anderson, a Mount Rainier National Park ranger who was fatally shot on New Year’s Day.

A funeral procession of law enforcement vehicles, ambulances, fire trucks and other emergency service vehicles arrived at Pacific Lutheran University Tuesday morning.

Later, hundreds of rangers, police officers and others stood at attention and saluted, as Anderson’s family and friends followed her flag-draped casket into the auditorium. An overflow venue has been set up at Rainier View Christian Church in Tacoma.

Anderson, a 34-year-old mother of two young girls, was shot and killed after setting up a roadblock to stop a vehicle that blew through a checkpoint on the road to the park’s visitor center. The driver of that vehicle shot Anderson in her car and ran away, authorities said.

Searchers found the body of the suspect, 24-year-old Iraq war veteran Benjamin Colton Barnes, in a snowy creek. An autopsy showed he died of hypothermia and drowning.

“You don’t think of this kind of this situation going into a national park,” said Grant Smith, operations director for Explorer Search and Rescue Pierce County.

Michael Jacobs, a retired park ranger, drove 700 miles from California to show his support for Anderson’s family, colleagues and the community.

“Ranger Anderson joined to help people and to serve,” said Jacobs, a reserve deputy with the Placer County Sheriff’s Department and one of hundreds of law enforcement and other officers who came to honor Anderson. “It was extremely tragic.”

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis were scheduled to speak, along with ministers.

Anderson had served as a ranger at Mount Rainier south of Seattle for three years. She was married to another ranger, Eric Anderson, who was on duty elsewhere in the park when she was killed.

The daughter of a Lutheran minister, Anderson grew up in New Jersey and earned a bachelor’s degree in fisheries and wildlife from Kansas State University and a master’s degree in biology from Fort Hays State University in Kansas, according to media reports.

She began working with the National Park Service as a law enforcement ranger at Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah, where she met her husband. She also worked as a law enforcement park ranger at Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historic Park in Maryland.

More Phuong Le.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments are not enabled for this story.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
192 points193 points | 7 comments
vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the persecuted late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
141 points142 points | comment
vote
Obstruction will ruin the GOP: Playing politics and abusing the system can excite the extremes, but it's a recipe for long-term political disaster
47 points48 points | 8 comments
vote
Loaded terminology like "entitlements" and "welfare" skews the debate and alters America. How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government.
41 points42 points | 20 comments
vote
With the help of Photoshop, artist Yao Lu has made shanshui — traditional ink paintings — of China's landfills
21 points22 points | comment

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations