What possesses people to engage in this sort of act?
I've known a number of cops over the years and those that I've known have been honest and motivated folks.
Why would anyone consider it a good idea to target deputies who are just out doing their jobs with a rifle?
That the perp is dead is fine, but it might have been better had he been taken alive and put away on multiple mandatory terms for murder. Don't know what the law is in CO, but here, attempted is as good as completed when it comes to the indictment and the sentencing and with multiple victims, the cumulative minimum time before a parole hearing would have come some years after the perp's own demise and it's not as though the guy would have gotten paroled on his first date anyway.
Death represents an end while a high security prison is a living death that ends only when an offender dies of natural causes.