Mount Rainier National Park ranger killed, gunman loose (Reuters)

(Reuters) ? A gunman shot and killed a ranger in Mount Rainier National Park in Washington state on Sunday after a traffic stop, and authorities shuttered the park as a search for the shooter got underway, park officials said.

Ranger Margaret Anderson, a 34-year-old mother of two young children, stopped the gunman's vehicle at a roadblock on Sunday morning shortly after another ranger tried to stop the same car about a mile away, park spokesman Kevin Bacher said in a recorded statement.

"The suspect fled and is still at-large on foot," Bacher said, adding that local law enforcement and the FBI were assisting in the manhunt.

Authorities closed the park, which welcomes around 2 million visitors a year at its site on the west side of the snow-capped Cascade mountain range, and were evacuating visitors, a spokeswoman said.

About 85 visitors and 15 park staff remained inside the park's visitor center, along with law enforcement officers, and were being held there until it was deemed safe to leave, spokeswoman Lee Taylor said.

"They're safe and secure where they are," she said. "I don't know how long we're going to ask them to stay there. We certainly don't want them driving down the road if there's a gunman who might take a pot shot at them."

Taylor had earlier told CNN that Anderson, the ranger who was killed, was married to another ranger at the park.

"She is a dedicated public servant, very committed to visitors to the park and to helping to protect park resources. Her husband is also a ranger at Mount Rainier and they have two small children... So it's a horrible tragedy. It's a terrible loss of life of somebody who had dedicated herself to serving the public," she said.

(Reporting by Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Cynthia Johnston)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120102/us_nm/us_death_ranger

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