Authorities set roadblocks outside refuge after fatal showdown

Law enforcement personnel block an access road to the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2016, near Burns, Ore.(Thomas Boyd/The Oregonian via AP)
The Associated Press

Law enforcement blocked the roads surrounding an Oregon wildlife refuge Wednesday morning after a series of surprise arrests left one activist dead and eight others in custody — including one of the armed group’s leaders, Ammon Bundy.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and Oregon State Police’s “containment procedure” is likely aimed at preventing more armed activists from bolstering the holdouts at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Ore., as well as keeping track of anyone who decides to leave.

Officials, who threatened to arrest anyone approaching the refuge except local ranchers, were planning to hold a mid-morning news conference Wednesday to discuss the previous day’s surprise showdown.

Law enforcement struck in a flurry of arrests Tuesday aimed at protesters who had temporarily left the occupied refuge, apparently to attend a community meeting.

Gunfire broke out when the FBI and the Oregon State Police intercepted Bundy and several of his supporters on a rural stretch of U.S. Highway 395.

The protesters had been en route to a meeting with hundreds of Oregon residents, many of them supporters of the occupation, about 100 miles north of the refuge in the town of John Day. They never made it.

Details of what happened during the showdown were scant. Officials would only say that shots were fired.

What began as a small, peaceful rally in Oregon has become an armed occupation of a wildlife refuge by protesters asserting rights on federal lands.

Ammon’s brother, Ryan Bundy, 43, of Bunkerville, Nev., was shot in the arm, and Robert “LaVoy” Finicum, a 55-year-old Arizona rancher who had acted as a spokesman for the group, was killed in the highway confrontation, according to Nevada Assemblywoman Michele Fiore.

Finicum’s daughter, Arianna Finicum Brown, confirmed her father’s death to the Oregonian newspaper. “He would never, ever want to hurt somebody, but he does believe in defending freedom, and he knew the risks involved,” said Brown, who was one of 11 children.

Ammon Bundy, 40, who has acted as a leader of the occupation, told his wife in a phone call that the group had been cooperative when law enforcement agents confronted them, according to Fiore, a Bundy family supporter who spoke with Bundy’s wife on Tuesday.

“It’s very unfortunate. The only saving grace is there’s six witnesses to it,” Fiore said in an interview.

Ryan Bundy was treated for non-life-threatening injuries and released into FBI custody.

The Bundy brothers are the sons of Cliven Bundy, a southern Nevada rancher who was at the center of a tense armed standoff of his own with federal Bureau of Land Management officials in 2014.

“Isn’t this a wonderful country we live in?” the elder Bundy said sarcastically Tuesday night when the Los Angeles Times informed him about the arrests and the death.

In addition to the Bundy brothers, those arrested on the highway included Brian Cavalier, 44, also of Bunkerville; Shawna Cox, 59, of Kanab, Utah; and Ryan Waylen Payne, 32, of Anaconda, Mont.

Police said they made a separate arrest of another man, Joseph O’Shaughnessy of Cottonwood, Ariz., who was taken into custody in the town of Burns, near the occupied wildlife refuge.

About two hours after the initial confrontation, authorities also arrested Internet radio host Pete Santilli, a supporter of the occupation who has documented the case on his program and via live stream since it began.

Another occupier, Jon Eric Ritzheimer, 32, an anti-government activist who has organized armed anti-Muslim rallies in Phoenix, turned himself in to police in Peoria, Ariz., without incident, officials said.