SPOKANE — A Spokane man who fled in mid-April before he could be sentenced on federal child pornography counts was hospitalized in Nevada after shooting himself as sheriff’s deputies closed in, officials said Wednesday.
Authorities say Daniel Camp, 33, wrote self-published books describing children in sexual situations. He pleaded guilty last year to charges of sharing and possessing images of child pornography.
Camp looked out his Eureka, Nev., hotel window as deputies approached on Tuesday, Eureka County Sheriff Ken Jones said Wednesday.
“We saw him look out the window. Fifteen seconds later we heard a gunshot in the room,” the sheriff said, adding deputies found Camp wounded and immediately began first aid.
Jones said Camp was airlifted to Renown Medical Center in Reno, Nev. KHQ-TV in Spokane reported that he was in critical condition Wednesday. The hospital referred Associated Press calls to a spokeswoman who did not immediately return a message seeking a condition update.
Seattle FBI spokeswoman Ayn Dietrich confirmed by email late Wednesday that her agency had been seeking Camp on a fugitive warrant but would add only that the FBI is “no longer actively trying to locate him.”
Jones said his office was alerted by the FBI that Camp might be in the Eureka area. Officers located Camp’s car at an auto repair shop and from there found his hotel. Deputies had planned to arrest the man on the fugitive warrant but never got that chance, the sheriff said.
Jones said he knows Camp was in Eureka on Monday and into Tuesday but doesn’t know his whereabouts before that.
FBI senior agent Frank Harrill of Spokane said earlier that Camp did not show up for a scheduled April 16 sentencing hearing and left two notes indicating he did not want to go to jail.
Camp had been staying at his mother’s home in Spokane Valley under pretrial release conditions since 2011. He fled in his mother’s car.
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