In this image taken from video provided by KABC-TV, the cabin in Big Bear, Calif. where ex-Los Angeles police officer Christopher Dorner is believed to be barricaded inside is in flames Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2013.
Associated Press
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BIG BEAR, Calif. ? A man police believe to be the fugitive ex-Los Angeles officer wanted in three killings was barricaded inside a burning cabin Tuesday after a shootout in a California mountain town Tuesday that left one deputy dead and another wounded.
The developments raised the possibility that the nearly week-old hunt for America's most wanted man might be coming to an end.
The cabin was on fire and smoke was coming from the structure in the late afternoon after police surrounded it in the snow-covered woods of Big Bear, a resort town about 80 miles east of Los Angeles.
Authorities have focused their hunt for Christopher Dorner there since they said he launched a campaign to exact revenge against the Los Angeles Police Department for his firing.
Authorities say Dorner threatened to bring "warfare" to LAPD officers and their families, spreading fear and setting off a search for him across three states and Mexico.
"Enough is enough. It's time for you to turn yourself in. It's time to stop the bloodshed," LAPD Cmdr. Andrew Smith said earlier in the day at a news conference held outside police headquarters in Los Angeles, a starkly different atmosphere than last week when officials briefed the news media under tight security with Dorner on the loose.
If the man inside the cabin does prove to be Dorner, it will both lower tensions among the more than 40 targets police say he listed in an online rant. It would also raise them for law enforcement officers who are engaged in a standoff with a former Navy reservist who has warned that he knows their tactics as well as they do.
Until Tuesday, authorities didn't know whether he was still near Big Bear, where they found his burned-out pickup last week.
Around 12:20 p.m. Tuesday, deputies got a report of a stolen vehicle, authorities said. The location was directly across the street from where law enforcement set up their command post on Thursday and not far from where Dorner's burned-out pickup was abandoned.
The people whose vehicle was stolen described the suspect as looking similar to Dorner. When authorities found the vehicle, the suspect ran into the forest and barricaded himself inside a cabin.
U.S. Forest Service spokesman John Miller said the first exchange of gunfire involved state Fish and Wildlife wardens at 12:42 p.m., and then there was a second exchange with San Bernardino County sheriff's deputies, two of whom were shot.
Police say Dorner began his run on Feb. 6 after they connected the slayings of a former police captain's daughter and her fiance with an angry Facebook rant they said he posted. Threats against the LAPD led officials to assign officers to protect officers and their families.
Within hours of the release of photos of the 6-foot, 270-pounder described as armed and "extremely dangerous," police say, Dorner unsuccessfully tried to steal a boat in San Diego to flee to Mexico and then ambushed police in Riverside County, shooting three and killing one.
Jumpy officers guarding one of the targets named in the rant in Torrance on Thursday shot and injured two women delivering newspapers because they mistook their pickup truck for Dorner's.
Police found charred weapons and camping gear inside the truck in Big Bear.
Helicopters using heat-seeking technology searched the forest from above while scores of officers, some using bloodhounds, scoured the ground and checked hundreds of vacation cabins ? many vacant this time of year ? in the area.
A snowstorm hindered the search and may have helped cover his tracks, though authorities were hopeful he would leave fresh footprints if hiding in the wilderness.
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