3 injured after gunman opens fire on sheriff’s office in Idaho before being fatally shot in standoff, officials say

By Alaa Elassar, Taylor Romine, CNN

(CNN) — A shooter armed with several guns opened fire in the lobby of an Idaho sheriff’s office and the street outside Friday, injuring three people before being killed in a standoff with law enforcement, the local sheriff said.

But Friday’s scene was starkly out of place for a town better known for its ski seasons, silver mines and history, which usually moves at a much slower, friendlier pace.

The shooter fired at a pickup truck outside the Shoshone County Sheriff’s Office in Wallace before entering the lobby and firing into the station toward the dispatch center, Shoshone County Sheriff William Eddy said at a news conference.

The suspected gunman has been identified as John Drake, Shoshone County Sheriff’s Office Captain Seth Green confirmed to CNN. Drake is believed to be about 77, Green said.

The shooting drew a massive police response, with a SWAT team and multiple agencies responding to the sheriff’s office at around 2:40 p.m. PT, the sheriff’s office said.

An officer-involved shooting followed, and Drake was pronounced dead at 4:15 p.m., he said. No information was available on Drake’s motive.

The injuries of the three people shot were described as minor, according to Eddy, who said two female victims in the pickup truck were shot in the leg. Eddy initially said Friday a police officer was shot in the ear. On Saturday, Green clarified the injury was caused by flying glass.

Initial reports indicated the suspect may have gained access to the jail, Kootenai County Sheriff Robert Norris said, which “ramped up” the response from law enforcement.

“This is a fairly significant event when you have a person that goes into a lobby of a sheriff’s office and starts a shootout,” he said.

The suspect appears to have stayed in the lobby and the people in the jail weren’t injured, Eddy said.

At least eight law enforcement agencies assisted the Shoshone County Sheriff’s Office, Eddy said. The Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office and the Coeur d’Alene Police Department will handle the criminal investigation while Idaho State Police will investigate the officer-involved shooting, he said.

Wallace, Idaho, about 70 miles east of Spokane, Washington is small even by Idaho standards, a postcard-worthy mountain town of fewer than 900 people tucked between steep mountains draped thick with evergreens.

Julie Swindell-Ward, a part-time Wallace resident, was grocery shopping across the street when the shooting started. She told CNN she immediately went back to her car after hearing someone mention a person with a gun at the sheriff’s office. On her way, she heard the gunshots.

From her car, she livestreamed the unfolding confrontation as police surrounded the building. More shots rang out as officers ordered the suspect to surrender, commanding him to come out with “both hands out in front of you” and get down on his stomach.

“Do it now,” an officer can be heard saying over a speakerphone, moments before what sounded like two or three gunshots were fired.

People scramble for cover

The violence rippled beyond the sheriff’s office. Just a block away, retired Shoshone County Sheriff’s Office dispatcher James Shields listened as gunshots echoed from the place where he once worked, fearing for the friends he left behind.

“It brought back a lot of memories of bad calls,” Shields told CNN. “I worked at the sheriff’s office. I worried about my friends there.”

When the shooting began, Shields was inside his jewelry store, the Idaho Silver Shop. After hearing “six to eight gunshots,” he and his employees immediately went into lockdown, Shields said. He gathered his staff and ushered them into the shop’s back room, away from the windows, where they remained hidden for nearly five hours.

“My employees felt safe because we had a plan in place to keep them safe,” Shields said.

Directly across the street from the sheriff’s office, bullets struck the Building Maintenance and Supply hardware store on Bank Street, with five rounds hitting the building — two of them tearing through the front counter, according to a post on the business’ Facebook page.

“All of our employees are safe and home,” the post continued. “Thank you to all law enforcement who responded to keep our community safe!”

Then, the post ended with a reminder for the locals: “Our front door is inoperable so please enter through the back door tomorrow!”

The sudden violence has not shaken locals’ deep love for their town or the pride they hold in the place they call home.

“My wife and I have lived here for over 38 years,” Shields said. “Wallace is a tourist town, usually a safe place to walk around with your family. We still feel safe in Wallace, and are not afraid to walk around anytime day or night.”

Employees from The Tin Snug, a former funeral home reborn as a café and vinyl record shop, showed up with food for the men and women of the Shoshone County Sheriff’s Office after Saturday’s shootout.

The gesture, shared by the sheriff’s office in a Facebook post alongside a photo of smiling deputies, stood as a small but powerful act of gratitude and solidarity.

Once a silver boomtown filled with brothels and saloons, Wallace preserves, and sometimes winks at, its history today. The Oasis Bordello Museum, a brothel that closed in 1988 and has been turned into a museum, still stands downtown, just steps from the sheriff’s office where the shootout unfolded.

In 2004, then-Mayor Ron Garitone declared Wallace the “Center of the Universe,” not for science but because it simply could not be proven otherwise. A manhole cover now marks the exact spot, and residents celebrate it every year.

The entire town is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, surrounded by vast stretches of protected forest, and sacred Indigenous land.

Gun violence is uncommon but not unheard of here – as can be said for many small towns who became victims of random, isolated incidents like this one.

Just 48 miles away in Coeur d’Alene, two firefighters were killed in an ambush while responding to a brush fire on June 29, 2025.

“I’m prior law-enforcement so it doesn’t shake me up personally,” Swindell-Ward said. “I think for a town that’s the small, it probably has rattled some people.”

She says she loves Wallace for its “small town vibe, great skiing in the winter, and summertime fun festivities,” and sees little reason to view it as dangerous, despite the incident.

“There’s been violence in society forever. It seems like the mechanism of harming people changes, but the evil is out there,” she added. “I know that sounds pretty weird to some, but evil is as evil does.”

This story has been updated with additional information.

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