As you probably know by now, several of the wildlife refuge occupiers in Oregon have been arrested, and one has been shot and killed:
Oregon standoff spokesman Robert "LaVoy" Finicum was killed and other leaders of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation were arrested Tuesday after the FBI and state police stopped vehicles about 20 miles north of Burns.Initial reports said that Finicum was resisting arrest, but militia backers had a different story:
Authorities did not release the name of the person who died at the highway stop, but Finicum's daughter confirmed it was Finicum....
State Rep. Michele Fiore (R-Nevada) and the “Bundy Ranch” Facebook page shared similar accounts of Finicum’s fatal shooting, each claiming the rancher had been shot with his hands up while his friends were arrested.
My heart & prays go out to LaVoy Finicum's family he was just murdered with his hands up in Burns OR.Ryan Bundy has been shot in the arm
— Michele Fiore (@VoteFiore) January 27, 2016The local media said that report had been debunked by a backer of the occupation:
Robert "LaVoy" Finicum ... was shot and killed after he charged police during a roadside stop north of Burns on Tuesday, according to a man on Facebook who claims to be the driver of one of two vehicles involved in the highway shooting.But some folks on the right didn't believe this:
Mark McConnell posted a video to Facebook Wednesday morning, recounting the Tuesday afternoon scene that led to Finicum's death....
Finicum ... was shot and killed after he charged police during a roadside stop north of Burns on Tuesday, according to a man on Facebook who claims to be the driver of one of two vehicles involved in the highway shooting.” That’s the 411 from Les Zaitz, senior investigative reporter at oregonlive.com. Problem: Mark McConnell’s Facebook page is now blank. As is the deceased’s daughter’s Facebook page.... As of this writing, we only have Zaitz’ description of McConnell’s video....
The screen cap from Mr. Finicum’s daughter [now wiped] Facebook page does, presenting a very different not-to-say inflammatory picture of events surrounding her father’s death.
But McConnell has posted a second video, and Travis Gettys of Raw Story has uploaded it to YouTube:
McConnell -- who was taken into custody, questioned and released -- recorded a second video early Wednesday morning, saying that Payne told him that he and Finicum got into an argument in the pickup after the rancher fled the police stop.But I think a certain number of angry, armed people in America just aren't going to believe this account (or this one, which echoes McConnell's story). They're going to believe that this was the government murder of a man who had his hands up.
He said Cox told him that Finicum crashed into the snowbank, jumped out of the manual transmission diesel pickup with the rear wheels still spinning and charged toward law enforcement officers.
The bodyguard said Cox and Payne each told him that Finicum charged toward officers before he was shot, and he explicitly denied that the rancher had surrendered or complied with law enforcement.
“He was not on his knees, none of that,” McConnell said. “He was none of that nonsense. You know, that was a miscommunication on somebody else’s part. But he went after them. He charged them. You know, LaVoy was very passionate about what he was doing up here.”
Somebody who thinks this was murder will try to avenge Finicum's death. I guarantee it. Given the way these folks think, the target could be any federal facility anywhere in America, or it could be any federal worker, or a member of that worker's family. There's a limit to how much can be done, but security really does need to be tightened at federal facilities after this. Anti-government extremists are crazy, so people are in danger now.
