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Coeur d’Alene, Idaho — 

The suspect who police believe killed two firefighters Sunday after igniting a brush fire in Idaho with a flint fire starter wanted to pursue a career as a firefighter himself, his grandfather told CNN.

Wess Roley, 20, was identified by a law enforcement official as the suspect in the shooting in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, which left two firefighters responding to the blaze dead and injured a third. Authorities said Roley was found dead at the scene, and appears to have shot himself.

Roley’s grandfather, Dale Roley, told CNN his grandson came from a family of arborists and had been working in the tree service industry while trying to figure out his career path.

Police say Wess Roley opened fire on the first responders from a tree, citing extensive experience climbing with his family. His motive remains unknown and no manifesto has been found.

“He wanted to be a fireman – he was doing tree work and he wanted to be a fireman in the forest,” Dale Roley said. “As far as I know, he was actually pursuing it.”

Wess Roley owned a shotgun and a long rifle, his grandfather said. Investigators are confident that a shotgun was used in the Sunday attack, but have stopped short of ruling out additional firearms.

Dale Roley said he typically spoke with his grandson on a weekly basis, but they hadn’t spoken in the last month because Wess Roley had lost his phone. He said the suspect had loving family and friends, and he vacationed in Hawaii with his mother last year, according to social media posts.

Officials said it appeared Wess Roley was living out of his vehicle, which remains on the scene and has not been inventoried.

“It wasn’t like he was a loner,” Dale Roley told CNN. “We had no reason to suspect that he would be involved in something like this.” He said he was holding out hope that his grandson wasn’t actually the shooter.

Roley previously lived in California, Arizona and Idaho, authorities said. A running website said that he ran track at a high school in Arizona and was a member of the school’s class of 2024.

Two former Arizona classmates of Roley’s painted a picture of a struggling student who occasionally lashed out in anger. He could be friendly at times, they said, but was seclusive from his peers.

A third former classmate described Roley as sometimes “verbally aggressive,” but echoed that he had the means to be friendly and fun.

“He would make us laugh so hard,” the classmate said. They would play with airsoft guns and video games, but sometimes “it was difficult to play with him… you would take him in doses.”

Court documents show that Roley had a tumultuous family life growing up. His mother filed for divorce in September 2015, when her son was 10 years old, and wrote in court documents that her husband had threatened her, pushed her to the ground, and “punched several holes in the walls.”

“He threatened to sit outside my house with a sniper rifle or burn my house down,” she wrote.

A judge granted a protective order preventing Roley’s father from having contact with his wife or son, but later amended the order to remove the son after his father wrote in a court filing that “I am not a danger to my son or anyone else” and that his wife “did not tell the truth in her statement.”

The divorce was granted in November 2015, and Roley’s mother was designated as his “primary residential parent.”

Roley’s stepfather described in a statement confusion and heartbreak among his family members who are still struggling to grapple with Sunday’s tragedy.

“We do not understand why this happened or how this came about. Our hearts and spirits are broken for the lost and hurting, and for our own loss as well,” the statement, released by Tony Cuchiara’s attorney, read. “Our hearts and spirits are broken for the lost and hurting, and for our own loss as well.”

The suspect himself has no criminal history, officials said. However, law enforcement in Kootenai County, Idaho, had minor interactions with him five times.

He has relatives near Coeur d’Alene, but it is unclear what he was doing in the area at the time of the shooting, Kootenai County Sheriff Bob Norris said.

“We knew that he lived here for the better part of 2024, but as far as when he got here, why he was here, why he chose this place, I don’t know,” Norris said.

Roley’s father told a CNN reporter outside his home in Priest River, Idaho, that he wasn’t close with his son and hadn’t seen him since a family gathering last year. He didn’t respond to follow-up phone calls about the decade-old allegations in the court documents. The suspect’s mother also didn’t answer phone calls Monday morning.

CNN’s Isabelle Chapman, Curt Devine and Majlie de Puy Kamp contributed to this report.