Lawyers Record Ammon Bundy’s Voice in Bid to End Occupation

The FBI has released video of state police fatally shooting Finicum. A major-incident investigative team from Deschutes County, Ore., is reviewing the shooting.

In the videos, the couple asks David Fry, husband and wife Sean and Sandy Anderson, and Jeff Banta to leave the refuge.

Ammon Bundy’s lawyer, Lissa Casey, said her client is not aligned with those remaining at the refuge near Burns.

The only woman arrested so far in the standoff at an OR wildlife refuge, Shawna Cox, will be allowed to go home while her case makes its way through the court system.

The victim’s family, however, said in a statement on Friday that they were not accepting the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) assertion that he was armed. Because of the camera’s distance from the scene and general low resolution quality of the footage, it’s hard to say that this does much to prove or disprove the claims, but Finicum does appear to be reaching towards his waist.

She also said that they all now needed to trust in “God’s will”.

On Tuesday, authorities killed one of the militants and arrested several others including the movement’s leader.

The shooting happened Tuesday afternoon during a traffic stop on a rural stretch of OR highway, where law enforcement had hoped to peacefully arrest the leaders of the armed group that had occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge since January 2. The FBI says four people remain there as the protest hits its fourth week.

In a court filing Friday, prosecutors say Bundy, his brother Ryan Bundy and others “have always been associated with armed conflicts with the federal government and have repeatedly rejected the authority of the federal government, making them unsuitable for court-ordered supervision”.

The criminal complaints detail some of the evidence against the occupiers.

Before Thursday, Fry had been regularly posting between 10 and 20 videos a day.

Protest leader Ammon Bundy, through his attorney, has called for an end to the stand off, saying people should take a step back in the light of a loss of life.

At that point, the video shows an Oregon State Police trooper emerge from the treeline, walk towards Finicum, and at that point officers shoot him. The FBI said Finicum had a loaded gun, and his truck almost hit an agent before it got stuck in the snow.

Bundy has issued messages through his attorney urging those remaining at the refuge to stand down, and saying they would continue to fight through the courts.

Bundy and his followers were on their way to a meeting in the community of John Day when they encountered the FBI-led operation to apprehend them.

Greg Bretzing, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Portland office, told reporters Finicum can be seen reaching for his jacket pocket, where officers found a loaded 9 millimetre semi-automatic handgun.

Finicum is seen fleeing in a white truck, almost striking an officer while trying to evade a police barricade, then barrelling into a deep snowbank and exiting the vehicle. The video, which is shot from a distance, shows him then lowering his hands toward his body, then falling into the snow as he is shot.