Ex-LAPD officer Christopher Dorner continues to evade California police

A desperate hunt for a rogue ex-police officer suspected of killing three in a deadly vendetta against the LAPD resumed Saturday morning in an isolated mountainous area where he is believed to be hiding.

Hundreds of heavily armed police are attempting to track Christopher Dorner across the snowy mountains of Big Bear, to the north of Los Angeles, after a vehicle belonging to the suspect was found abandoned and burnt out nearby.

That hunt has been matched by the deployment of thousands of other police across southern California in a tense, frantic and panicky manhunt that has already seen police open fire in two separate incidents against innocent people.

Dorner, 33, has declared war on law enforcement officers and their families in a manifesto posted to the Internet that complains of his 2008 firing from the Los Angeles police department. But police have already admitted that they fear he may have escaped their dragnet as heavy snow and poor weather has made the search for him around Big Bear very difficult.

The weather made a ground hunt for Dorner impossible overnight and instead helicopters equipped with infra-red technology were deployed. But officers on foot were set to begin combing the rugged terrain again on Saturday morning, using dogs and backed up by armoured personal carriers equipped with chains.

The search for Dorner has stunned many Californians and captured attention worldwide. In a city known as the home of Hollywood action movies the real world crisis has felt a little like a surreal film plot from the latest blockbuster.

"He knows what he's doing – we trained him," Charlie Beck, chief of the Los Angeles police department, told a press conference last week. Dorner, who has posted a long and rambling statement onto Facebook, is accused of killing three people and wounding two others in self-declared "unconventional and asymmetrical warfare" against his former comrades. The week-long rampage has terrorised police from San Diego to LA after his manifesto tried to explain his actions and detailed a 40-person hit list.

Not surprisingly the story has rapidly spread over social media. Twitter buzzed with film references like Cape Fear, Rambo, The Deer Hunter, The Bourne Ultimatum, The Fugitive. More shockingly in some minds, Dorner was becoming a modern folk legend. Facebook pages sprouted up in support, hailing him a rebel.

Dorner's story was also swept into debates about race, gun control and law enforcement. According to his manifesto, this week's rampage can be traced back to racial taunts directed at him as a black boy in a mostly white school.

He attended Southern Utah University from 1997 to 2000, graduating with a bachelor's degree in political science and a minor in psychology. He played running back for the football team.

Dorner joined the navy in 2002, serving in Nevada and San Diego and Bahrain, where he was awarded the Iraqi Campaign Medal and National Defense Service Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal and other medals for marksmanship.

Clint Grimes, a former navy comrade, told reporters that Dorner was excited to join the LAPD, calling it a dream job. He appeared to like military protocol. "I would say: 'Call me Clint', and he would say: 'Yes, sir.'" Dorner was friendly, bright and technologically savvy, said Grimes. "I never knew him not to be smiling. They're not looking for a stupid guy here," Grimes said.

The dream job swiftly soured however. He accused a female training partner of kicking a mentally ill homeless man during a routine stop. She denied it, witnesses appeared to back her, and Dorner was fired in 2008 for making false accusations. A tribunal upheld the decision in 2009.

Divorced and without a job, Dorner seethed and called the sacking an affront to his "honor, courage and commitment". On 31 January he posted his manifesto, and on 3 February allegedly killed his first victims: Monica Quan, 28, a basketball coach and her fiance, Keith Lawrence, 27, as they sat in a car in Irvine, south of LA. Quan was the daughter of a police captain who had represented Dorner – negligently, in Dorner's view – at the tribunal.

As units scrambled to protect those named on the hit list, he was spotted near Corona at 1.30am local time on Thursday and exchange shots with a patrol, grazing one officer in the head. About 20 minutes later he allegedly ambushed two officers at a red traffic light in nearby Riverside, killing one, a veteran, and wounding the other, a trainee.

Police lashed out but picked the wrong targets. Officers from the Hollywood division blazed at a pick-up truck in Torrance, thinking it was Dorner's grey Nissan. They fired more than a dozen bullets, only to find they had hit two women who were delivering newspapers. They were taken to hospital with minor injuries. A few minutes later officers in another part of Torrance opened fire on another pick-up driven mistaken for Dorner's. No one was injured.