The FBI released a video of the arrests on their YouTube page. There’s a long version and a shorter edited version. At 5:40 in the short version is Lavoy getting stuck in the snow after damn near running over an officer, getting out, reaching in his waistband a couple times and going down.
Holy shit!
So, we’ll never know what he was actually reaching for . . . “gun” being the least disturbing possibility, and how often is that true?!
Of course this won’t satisfy the conspiracy theorists but it should everyone else. Whether or not you are armed, you DO NOT reach for your waist when police have a gun pointed at you.
That’s pretty unequivocal. He had his hands up when he got out of the vehicle, then put them down (twice) to reach for his waistband. Given his previous statements (and even without them) it was entirely reasonable for the officers to believe he was going for a gun.
OregonLive has some details.
oregonian.com redirects to oregonlive.com, which displays the logo for the Oregonian in the header. Wikipedia lists oregonlive.com as the website for The Oregonian newspaper. Searching google for “Oregonian newspaper online” returns OregonLive.com.
Given how the events unfolded, it’s difficult to see how the officers could have apprehended Finicum without endangering their own lives. He had already nearly killed one with the vehicle.
These people were ready and willing to die for their cause, but prison – no way!
Just watched the video. Seems pretty hard to argue he wasn’t reaching for something, but I have no doubt the nutters will find a way to do so.
https://member.oregonlive.com/access.aspx
Knock y’self out.
What are the five yellow-ish flashes that occur about 30 to 60 seconds after Bob Finicum falls? Muzzle flashes from the pickup? Because there were no muzzle flashes when he was shot.
Also, the video I saw was stamped “27 Jan 2016” but the actual event was on the 26th: I suspect that will result in claims that it was messed with.
What a massive sense of entitlement these people have. And boy are they whiners! They should all be put in prison for a bit and have massive fines go against their assets. This is definitely one of those cases where they need to have the book thrown at them to serve as a deterrent from other criminals doing the same thing.
I know there aren’t many (or any?) militia sympathizers here, and I’m no expert in body language or anything, but I do have a lot of practice with tactical pistol shooting and here’s what I see:
He has his hands up at first and is moving diagonally away from the truck until he spots the SWAT officer in the road. He immediately brings his hands down to pull his jacket with his left hand and reach inside it with his right. If you have a gun on that side, this is how you draw it, plain and simple. You steady the jacket with the other hand while you draw it or else the gun will probably get hung.
While he’s doing this, watch his feet. He is trying to turn his feet and body and position himself to engage the SWAT officer, but he’s in deep snow and doesn’t have good footing. Maybe the gun is stuck in the jacket, but I think the lack of footing is screwing up his concentration too and he’s unable to draw his pistol.
He hears someone behind him (with a tazer?) and immediately tries to turn around and face them. The SWAT officer fires because Lavoy has turned to where he can’t see his hands and there’s another officer who could be in danger. If he hadn’t turned and had taken a few more seconds to draw his pistol, I think the SWAT officer would have held fire and he would have gotten tazed and survived.
He was reaching for something, which is cause enough to shoot him, but the second piece of key evidence for me is that he immediately tried to spin around to face the second officer. If you’re giving up, you don’t care about a noise behind you. You only care about that if you’re trying to engage.
It looks like it got super bright near the vehicle on that cloudy day just after the yellow flashes. I’d guess LEOs shot up some type of super-bright flares?
Zulu time.
According to the FBI, they fired flash-bangs followed by “sponge projectiles with OC capsules,” similar to pepper spray, to secure the people remaining in the vehicle.
Noted - one of the vehicle’s windows (front passenger) was blown out by something in that same time frame.
He was reaching for his pocket constitution when they murdered him.
Well, perhaps not, but I’m sure it will make for a good conspiracy theory for the nutters to use.
Looks like the Oregon State Police and FBI didn’t skimp when it came to passing out laser sights for the team.