LaVoy Finicum’s Family: New Video Release Shows Police/FBI Shooting Was “Murder”
The release last week of video footage taken from the cellphone of a passenger inside the pickup truck driven by Arizona rancher Robert LaVoy Finicum provides dramatic new evidence of the final minutes and seconds before he was shot to death at a roadblock near Burns, Oregon, on January 26.It also shows, for the first time, the tense situation for the survivors huddled inside the pickup, as the shooting by the FBI and Oregon State Police (OSP) continued.The video, which was released by the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office at a press conference on March 8, shows the new footage as an inset within the already well-known FBI footage taken from an aerial camera and released by the FBI on January 28.As The New American previously reported, the FBI video, because it is shaky, jumpy, blurry, is of poor resolution, and has no sound, raises more questions than provides answers. It does not, for example, answer the vital questions concerning when the firing began and how many shots were fired. (Government officials acknowledge that neither Mr. Finicum nor any other occupants of his vehicle fired any weapons, although the incident was widely reported, initially, as a “gunfight.”) Nor does the newly released video definitively resolve the key issue as to whether Mr. Finicum’s hand motion was the result of reaching for a gun (the FBI/OSP version), which, allegedly, was in his pocket, or was reaching toward his side due to having already been shot (the Finicum family’s version).The new video footage, which was taken by Shawna Cox, has been unavailable until now, since it was confiscated by the FBI when she was arrested along with the other passengers in Finicum’s truck. Mrs. Cox’s video, which is of good quality, provides important audio and imagery evidence, but still does not definitively resolve key issues, such as the disputed significance of Finicum’s hand motion, which goes directly to the matter of the use of deadly force.The main takeaway from the March 8 press conference — the message that was blared in headlines in the establishment media — was that the shooting of Finicum, a leader of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, was “justified.” Shane Nelson, the Deschutes County sheriff, told the assembled news organizations: “We have determined that eight shots were fired on that day, six of which have been attributed to the Oregon State Police, including the three shots that resulted in the death of Mr. Finicum, and two shots which were fired by the HRT [FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team] operators.”
Source: LaVoy Finicum’s Family: New Video Release Shows Police/FBI Shooting Was “Murder”
