Eastern WA hero being honored after stopping accused Gorge concert killer
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- Officer will be honored with the Justice Department Hometown Hero Award.
- Suspect shot five people at the The Gorge campground; two of them were killed.
- Undercover officer shot the suspect in the head, ending the shooting spree.
An Eastern Washington police officer who stopped a deadly shooting spree at The Gorge Amphitheatre campground three years ago will be honored Thursday with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Hometown Hero Award.
Officer Edgar Salazar of the Moses Lake Police Department and four other officers were advancing across an open field under fire when Salazar shot and wounded the suspect.
The suspect, James M. Kelly, is accused of shooting five people at The Gorge campground, two of whom died.
Salazar was at The Gorge campground on the evening of June 17, 2023, where he was working to buy drugs as an undercover street crimes detective and a task force officer with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration
Kelly, then 28, was holding his girlfriend, Lily Luksich, 20, hostage when Salazar and other officers responded to reports of a shooting, according to the Moses Lake Police Department.
The girlfriend had earlier called 911 after Kelly started shooting in the campground and said only that “her man had a gun” before Luksich grabbed her cellphone and threw it.
Moses Lake officer shoots
Salazar and his fellow officers arrived to find Kelly across an open field by the campground, where he was beating and attempting to choke Luksich, said the Moses Lake police. According to court documents he had already shot her in the foot and the upper leg.
The undercover officers were armed only with what Moses Lake police called “small backup pistols” and were not wearing body armor.
Despite that, the five officers advanced across the open field as Kelly fired at them, according to Moses Lake police.
When Salazar was 60 to 70 feet from Kelly, the officer shot once with his Glock 26 9mm, a subcompact pistol with a three-inch barrel. He hit Kelly in the head.
Officers provided medical aid to Kelly and took him into custody, according to Moses Lake police.
All five officers — including Sgts. Kyle McCain, Curt Ledeboer and Omar Ramirez of the Moses Lake Police Department and Detective Korey Judkins of the Grant County Sheriff’s Office — have previously been awarded the Washington State Law Enforcement Medal of Honor and received their departments’ highest award for valor.
The Hometown Hero Award is presented by the Justice Department to those who “demonstrate exceptional bravery, civic responsibility and steadfast dedication to the enduring ideals of liberty and service.”
Salazar was selected for the award by former U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi.
He and the Silent Majority Foundation previously were among plaintiffs in a guns right lawsuit filed in Washington state, and the foundation, then headed by Pete Serrano, praised him for his “quick, courageous and decisive action,” at The Gorge Amphitheatre campground. Serrano is now the Department of Justice’s first assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Washington.
Salazar is a former Marine who served in combat in Iraq and has served the Moses Lake Police Department for 11 years.
The public is invited to a Department of Justice awards ceremony at 11. a.m. Thursday, July 9, at the Moses Lake City Council chambers.
Gorge shooting timeline
Kelly, then a U.S. Army joint fire support specialist at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, was at The Gorge Amphitheatre for the Beyond Wonderland Electronic dance music festival when he took some psilocybin mushrooms.
As he hallucinated, he began to believe the world was ending.
He took his girlfriend back to their campsite, where he grabbed a handgun from a locked box in his truck and loaded a magazine, according to court documents.
Josilyn Ruiz, 26, and her fiancé Brandy P. Escamilla, 29, both Seattle nurses, came across him shortly after 8:20 p.m. as they were walking through the campground, according to court documents.
Kelly fired several shots, hitting and killing the couple, according to court documents.
Andrew J. Cuadra, 31, heard the shots and started moving toward them. As he neared Kelly, the soldier allegedly fired at least one shot, hitting the man in the shoulder, according to court documents.
Kelly then started walking through the campground with Luksich following him and making her brief call to 911.
A Polaris utility vehicle with several Crowd Management Services employees on it was responding to the shots when they crossed paths with Kelly. Employee Lori L. Williams was driving along the fence line when Kelly fired several shots, according to the court documents.
One of those punched through the windshield, and hit her glasses. Her glasses shattered, and she was cut and bruised. A second bullet hit the front bumper of the Polaris.
Kelly and Luksich reached a farm field next to the campground where Grant County sheriff’s deputies found them. The deputies flew a drone over them and Kelly fired several times at it.
At multiple times, Luksich lay down on the ground. Kelly either sat on her, or sat next to her and leaned over.
At one point, Luksich began to walk north away from Kelly, turned around with her hands raised in the air and then walked back to Kelly, according to a court document.
He then shot her once in the foot, and a second time in the upper leg. The second shot caused life-threatening injuries that resulted in what investigators say will be permanent injuries.
After Salazar shot Kelly, the suspect was treated at Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane.
He was charged in Grant County Superior Court with two counts of premeditated first-degree murder and three counts of first-degree assault with a deadly weapon.
However, earlier this year the case was dismissed in Grant County and turned over to a military court.
-Tri-City Herald reporter Cameron Probert contributed to this report.
This story was originally published July 8, 2026 at 4:02 PM.