Rancher killed in refuge standoff vowed to die before jail

“Please stand down. Go home and hug your families”.

“LaVoy (Finicum) got out with his hands up in the air, up in the air, saying, ‘I don’t have a gun”, Bundy said in an exclusive interview on Newsmax TV’s prime time show Dennis Michael Lynch: Unfiltered. “I know he would never provoke an officer”.

The protest group posted on its Facebook page Wednesday, saying “peaceful, principled defiance of tyranny is never lawless”.

Last week, some 30 people, including women and children, were at the site, but it was unclear how many remain.

Bundy’s request also comes after federal authorities increased pressure on the remaining protesters to abandon the refuge. “It’s time for everybody in this illegal occupation to move on”, Ward said.

Many residents of Harney County, where the refuge is located, have been among those demanding the protesters end the standoff. A ninth member was fatally shot by law-enforcement officers during a traffic stop on a rural road. “This is a free-for-all Armageddon!” the man yelled into the camera.

“I’m disappointed that a traffic stop yesterday that was supposed to bring peaceful resolution to this ended badly”, said Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward, adding that the protesters should have voiced their grievances through appropriate channels.

“It didn’t have to happen”, he said.

I will say that the armed occupiers were given ample opportunities to leave peacefully. He did not elaborate.

Also Wednesday, a federal judge in Portland unsealed a criminal complaint that said the armed group had explosives and night-vision goggles and that they were prepared to fight at the refuge or in the nearby town of Burns.

“Media has been ordered to leave, which means they’re coming to kill us, and they don’t want them to see that”, one man said in a livestream from the refuge. Five others including Bundy were arrested at the scene.

When officers pulled over a caravan of leaders from the anti-government protest group something went wrong, and 54-year-old LaVoy Finicum was shot and killed’.

An Arizona rancher was reportedly killed in a standoff with Oregon State Police on Tuesday.

One person died and 8 were arrested after the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Oregon State Police intercepted the group along Highway 395.

The Bundys and the other occupiers contend the federal government had illegally taken federal lands in OR and elsewhere around the West, from ranchers and other private landholders over the decades, and demanded that the lands be returned to local control.

The FBI and Oregon State Police then erected roadblocks to isolate the people still holed up at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. While the ranchers distanced themselves from Bundy’s militia, the group continued to voice its opposition to their punishment as well as demanding that the federal government turn public land it manages over to locals. A almost unused building on public land could arguably be preferable to tying up public streets.

This report contains material from the Associated Press.