On the day Christopher Dorner was fired from the Los Angeles Police Department, officials took the unusual step of summoning armed guards to stand watch at his disciplinary hearing downtown.
Those present were nervous that Dorner might do something rash when he learned that he was being stripped of his badge. He was a hulking, muscled man and his body language left no doubt about the anger seething out of him.
"It was clear… that he was wound way too tight," said a police official who attended Dorner's termination hearing and requested anonymity because of safety concerns.
Friends and acquaintances who knew Dorner before he became a police officer struggled to reconcile the person they remembered with the image of the deeply disturbed man that emerged Thursday from a rambling manifesto that authorities said was published on what they believe is Dorner's Facebook page. The manifesto portrays Dorner as having no choice but to kill in order to reclaim his destroyed reputation.
"I am a man who has lost complete faith in the system, when the system betrayed, slandered and libeled me," the manifesto states.
