The FBI released full video of the stop along a snowy OR highway in which an Arizona rancher who had been holed up with other protesters at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge was shot and killed.
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The Federal Bureau of Investigation on Thursday released video footage of Tuesday’s shooting death of the spokesman for a group of armed men who have occupied a wildlife refuge in OR for almost a month. Officials didn’t say how many times Finicum was shot, or whether he actually pulled the gun out of his pocket.
The leader of the takeover, Ammon Bundy, his brother Ryan, and nine others have been arrested on federal charges. If the occupiers, whom he calls his “fellow patriots”, do not get assurance of an unimpeded exit, they are prepared to hold their ground, he said.
The holdouts have been frequently posting to the YouTube channel “DefendYourBase” during the almost four-week-old standoff but have not issued a video update since Thursday morning. It has said only that it is trying to “empty the refuge of the armed occupiers in the safest way possible”.
“Although he may have been animated, he does not appear to have been threatening or posing any real threat or danger to anyone”, Finicum’s family said in their statement.
“I want to acknowledge the stress and disruption that the occupation of the refuge has caused to the people of Harney County”, he said. “There are things more important than your life and freedom is one of them”, he said in a now-infamous interview conducted beneath the tarp. “By its very nature, this offense demonstrates a remarkable inability on the part of all charged defendants to follow the law and thus comply with the terms of court-ordered supervision”, the government’s memorandum in support of pretrial detention said.
Eleven other people have been arrested in connection to the standoff.
The video, shot from a helicopter, shows a vehicle being driven by Bundy stopped by police on a road. Let us take this fight from here.
The video was shown to reporters during a press conference on Thursday in Oregon.
“Finicum leaves the truck and steps through the snow”, Bretzing said.
Police and federal agents kept their distance from the site, 30 miles (48 km) from the small town of Burns in Oregon’s rural southeast, in an effort to avoid a violent confrontation.
Fry said that although the leaders of the group appear to be targeted for arrest, that the rest of the participants would be targeted after leaving the refuge.
A man, identified as Finicum, then gets out of the truck and officers open fire as he reaches into his jacket. He is shot and falls to the snow.
“As is seen in the video, he makes a movement towards the inside-right panel of his jacket”, Bretzing said, “where there was located a loaded semi-automatic pistol”.
The FBI said it was working “around the clock” to negotiate with the holdouts.
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The case led Bundy’s group to demand an inquiry into whether the government is forcing ranchers off their land, though the father-and-son ranchers distanced themselves from the occupiers.
