KANAB, Utah – Some of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupiers who were not among the 16 recently indicted attended memorial services for occupation spokesman Robert “LaVoy” Finicum in southwestern Utah on Friday.
About 1,000 family members, friends, admiring strangers and the curious came from as far away as Florida to pay tribute to Finicum, who was shot and killed Jan. 26 by Oregon State Police at a roadblock 20 miles north of Burns. Several others were taken into custody.
Among those arrested was the occupation’s public face, Arizona businessman Ammon Bundy; his brother Ryan Bundy, who was slightly injured in the shooting; and Ryan Payne, a U.S. Army veteran from Montana who played a key planning role.
All 16 face a charge of conspiracy to impede federal officers through intimidation, threats or force. They were named in an indictment returned Wednesday and unsealed Thursday.
Blaine Cooper, an Arizona man who often appeared with video gear alongside Ammon Bundy during the now more than monthlong occupation, has not been arrested or indicted.
Cooper said in an interview Friday he wasn’t sure why. “Luck maybe,” he said.
Cooper also noted he had not been armed.
“I did mainly media updates for Ammon,” he said. “I think I can make my point without violence or intimidation.”
Court records show Cooper was convicted of felony aggravated assault in 2010 after a domestic fight involving a kitchen knife; the conviction would bar him from carrying a gun. He said Friday that he believed restrictions on his Second Amendment right to bear arms were unconstitutional.
He also said the domestic violence charges had been “blown out of proportion,” that he has suffered the consequences and has since repaired his relationship with his now-wife.
Cooper said he has received death threats from people who are suspicious he was spared an indictment. “I have been slandered,” he said. “To that I just say, I just tried to do my patriotic duty as best I could.”
Cooper said he stayed at the refuge Jan. 26 because he didn’t know about the planned meeting with Grant County Sheriff Glenn Palmer, though he knew a group of the occupation’s leaders was leaving and had heard someone mention John Day.
Initially, the news of Finicum’s death seemed a wild rumor, Cooper said, and the people left at the refuge didn’t believe it. The tide turned when Lisa Bundy, Ammon Bundy’s wife, called him a couple of hours after the shooting, he said.
The remaining occupiers then took a vote in the chow hall on what to do next, he said. The decision was not unanimous, but many occupiers chose to leave in a large armed convoy.
Two checkpoints were already set up near the refuge, Cooper said, but the convoy was able to avoid them and continue into Nevada. Cooper and others later crossed into Utah in preparation for Finicum’s memorial, he said.
He has not returned to his home in Dewey-Humboldt, Arizona, a suburb of Prescott. Cooper said his wife, Melissa Cooper, and children, who joined him in Oregon but did not stay at the refuge, are safe and staying with family.
Cooper said he was distraught about the death of Finicum, with whom he prayed at the refuge each morning.
He recalled a conversation two days before Finicum’s death. “If I die, make sure my body is buried on my ranch,” Cooper said Finicum told him. “I think he knew something was coming.”
Cooper’s earlier activism most often was related to the U.S.-Mexico border, which he has patrolled as a volunteer with Arizona Border Recon, a group that works to disrupt the flow of drugs and people into the country by taking over high ground from Mexican cartel scouts. He also confronted U.S. Sen. John McCain at a town hall meeting in 2013, calling his support for funding Syrian rebels “.”
More recently, Cooper appeared alongside three of the occupation’s now-indicted key figures in a , which he said in the introduction was recorded in Burns. The video was a “call out” to members of the self-described patriot movement to come to eastern Oregon in support of a pair of ranchers who had been ordered back to prison to complete five-year prison terms on arson charges.
Cooper said Friday that he went to Oregon after seeing Ammon Bundy’s blog posts about the ranchers. He met Bundy in Bunkerville, Nevada, in 2014 when Ammon Bundy’s father, Cliven Bundy, defied federal officials who tried to round up his cattle in a dispute over unpaid grazing fees.
Cliven Bundy also appeared in Kanab on Friday. He sat astride a horse as two of Finicum’s daughters addressed the news media after the memorial, calling again for an independent investigation into their father’s death. A yellow Gadsden flag, bearing the words “Don’t tread on me,” waved in front of him.
Mel Bundy, another of Cliven Bundy’s 14 children, attended the memorial and the concert later Friday evening. He was in Burns, though less visible than his brothers.
Occupier Wes Kjar helped organize a procession on horseback.
Brand Thornton blew into a spiral-shaped shofar, a kind of trumpet made from an animal horn, outside the Mormon stake center where the events were held. He also brought the horn to Burns and to Bunkerville, Nevada, in 2014.
None of the three has been indicted.
At the last minute, a judge permitted Shawna Cox to attend the memorial as long as she did not “engage in any public commentary.” Cox, who is from Kanab, is part of the same Mormon community as Finicum’s family, her attorney said. She was arrested at the roadblock where Finicum was killed. Her attendance at the memorial could not be independently confirmed.
