A year ago, Jeanette Finicum was watching her daughter’s basketball game at Fredonia High School when she overheard something about a shooting in Oregon.
She had just returned to Arizona from a weekend visit with her husband at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, where Robert “LaVoy” Finicum had become the spokesman for the armed takeover.
She grabbed her cellphone, dialed her husband’s number but didn’t get an answer. A short time later, she got a call from Lisa Bundy, the wife of refuge occupation leader Ammon Bundy.
“She told me LaVoy had been killed,” Jeanette Finicum recalled this week. “It was horrific. They stopped the game. His mother and father and brother, my daughter were all there.”
The family left the gym and gathered in a school hallway. Local officers at the game to watch their own daughters play accompanied the Finicums to the police station to try to learn what had happened.
Oregon State Police had shot and killed LaVoy Finicum, 54, after he sped away from a police stop on snow-covered U.S. 395 about 20 miles north of Burns as he and others left the refuge on Jan. 26, 2016.
Jeanette Finicum has returned to Oregon this week to gather supporters in John Day – the city where her husband was headed to speak at a town hall about the refuge seizure and the protest against federal control of public land when he died.
Saturday’s meeting comes as questions remain a year later about the FBI’s role in the confrontation. Jeanette Finicum said she intends to file a wrongful death lawsuit. In a notice of her intention to sue the Oregon State Police, FBI and other law enforcement agencies, she alleges negligence and violation of her husband’s civil rights.
“I don’t know if they’ll hold anyone accountable unless we pursue that,” she said.
LaVoy Finicum shooting: An animated diagram
That day, LaVoy Finicum swerved into a snowbank to avoid a police roadblock. He emerged from his white truck, stumbled on top of the snowbank and was shot three times in the back as investigators said he tried to reach into his jacket at least two times to grab a loaded 9mm pistol.
The fatal shooting of Finicum and arrest of Ammon Bundy and other key occupation figures marked the beginning of the end of the refuge seizure.
Officers fired eight gunshots that night. The district attorney in neighboring Malheur County, charged with overseeing the investigation, found that state police fired six times, including three shots that struck Finicum. He ruled the state police shooting was justified.
A federal investigation continues into two shots fired by an FBI agent the moment Finicum emerged from his truck – one hit the roof of the truck and one went astray. Oregon investigators believe that members of the FBI Hostage Rescue Team at the scene picked up shell casings to hide the shots and have lied about what happened, according to court records, investigative reports and law enforcement sources.
A federal grand jury has convened as part of the federal inquiry. Part of the challenge has been determining which of the FBI agents fired the shots.
Oregon investigators continue to interview members of the Hostage Rescue Team and potential witnesses, according to the Deschutes County Sheriff. The U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General, along with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, are leading the inquiry.
A look back at LaVoy Finicum’s role during the Oregon standoff
Jeanette Finicum said the John Day gathering will serve to honor her husband. She’ll introduce her children, she said, but added, “This isn’t about us, the Finicum family. This is about our liberties that are being lost in lots of different ways.”
Among the speakers are one of Ammon Bundy’s lawyers, J. Morgan Philpot, who’s now representing Jeanette Finicum in a dispute over grazing fees with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Also invited is KrisAnne Hall, a radio talk show host and prominent Tea Party figure, and Grant County Sheriff Glenn Palmer, but it’s not clear if Palmer will show.
Grant County logger Tad Houpt, who met Jeanette Finicum last year at the makeshift memorial that sprung up at the site where her husband was killed, rented out the pavilion at the John Day Fairgrounds for the gathering.
Houpt owns about 400 acres near Canyon City, just south of John Day. He said he’s still cleaning up from the 2015 Canyon Creek Fire that destroyed two of his homes and decimated much of his timber.
He visited the refuge during last winter’s occupation to find out for himself what was going on and invited Ammon Bundy, his brother, Ryan Bundy, and others to John Day for the community meeting.
Houpt said he’s angry over what he calls government’s mismanagement of forestlands that he believes helped fuel the Canyon Creek Fire. He also was disturbed by the return to federal prison of Harney County ranchers Dwight Hammond Jr. and his son, Steven Hammond, last year to serve out five-year mandatory minimum sentences for setting fire to public land.
“The federal government is a very poor neighbor in eastern Oregon,” Houpt said.
About 450 tickets have been sold for Saturday’s event. The Pavilion has a 999-person capacity, Fairgrounds Manager Mindy Winegar said. Grant County Judge Scott W. Myers signed off on the rental.
“We have no intention of interfering with someone’s right to assemble and their right to free speech,” Myers said.
Jeanette Finicum testified for the defense at last year’s trial of the Bundy brothers and five others – all acquitted on federal conspiracy charges in the occupation.
She maintains her husband “wasn’t trying to avoid authorities” when he fled in his truck on Jan. 26, 2016, but simply wanted to make it to John Day to see Grant County’s sheriff.
She said she’s thankful for the support her family has received in the past year.
“I hope people are inspired in their own ways to move forward the cause of liberty in a positive, respectful peaceful manner,” she said.
