Thousands of people are expected at Tuesday's memorial service for Margaret Anderson, the Washington state national park ranger who grew up in New Jersey and was fatally shot on New Year's Day.
A procession of law enforcement vehicles, ambulances, fire trucks and other emergency service vehicles arrived at Pacific Lutheran University late Tuesday morning for the service for Anderson, who worked with her husband at Mount Rainier National Park.
The 90-minute service is scheduled for 1 p.m. An overflow venue has been set up at Rainier View Christian Church in Tacoma.
Anderson, a 34-year-old mother of two young girls who attended high school in Westfield, was shot and killed after setting up a roadblock to stop a vehicle that blew through a checkpoint on the road to the park's visitor center. The driver of that vehicle shot Anderson in her car and ran away.
Searchers found the body of the suspect, 24-year-old Iraq war veteran Benjamin Colton Barnes, in a snowy creek. An autopsy showed he died of hypothermia and drowning.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis are scheduled to speak, along with local ministers.
Anderson had served as a ranger at Mount Rainier south of Seattle for three years. She was married to another ranger, Eric Anderson, who was on duty elsewhere in the park when she was killed.
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The daughter of a Lutheran minister, Anderson grew up in New Jersey and earned a bachelor's degree in fisheries and wildlife from Kansas State University and a master's degree in biology from Fort Hays State University in Kansas, according to media reports.
She began working with the National Park Service as a law enforcement ranger at Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah, where she met her husband. She also worked as a law enforcement park ranger at Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historic Park in Maryland.
