Todd M. Siebert: Gunfire erupts at Oregon standoff with feds

Tuesday, 26 January 2016

Gunfire erupts at Oregon standoff with feds

Ammon Bundy taken into custody, shots fired during incident (Photo: Twitter)

Ammon Bundy and as many as eight of his fellow militiamen are in FBI custody at the side of the Oregon stand-off, according to reports.

“Two people were shot” at the scene not far from where the armed group was occupying a government building, according to Oregon Live. Authorities reportedly stopped Bundy and the others while they were on their way to a community meeting.

Lisa Goodman, a spokeswoman for St. Charles Health System in Bend, said an AirLink ambulance was dispatched to Burns. According to Oregon Live, she couldn’t confirm how many people the ambulance has been sent to retrieve, or whether Bundy is among those shot.

“It’s on the ground there now,” Goodman said, according to Oregon Live updates. “We can’t confirm it’s Ammon Bundy. We don’t know who it is.”

Bundy and his fellow ranchers had refused to leave the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Burns, Oregon, over allegations of federal overreach by the Bureau of Land Management. They said they wanted the federal government to surrender its control over the land. They also wanted father-son ranchers Dwight and Steve Hammond to be released from prison, where they are serving a sentence for arson.

U.S. District Judge Michael R. Hogan sentenced the pair to a one-year prison sentence in 2012 for fires they caused that spilled over into acreage, also leased by the Hammond Ranch. In 2014, however, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals determined that now-retired U.S. District Judge Michael Hogan illegally sentenced the Hammonds to terms below the five-year minimum. The Hammonds were ordered back to prison, despite serving time and paying $400,000 in damages to the government.

As WND recently reported, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown told federal officials that it is time to advance on ranchers holed up in the refuge since Jan. 2.

Brown said Wednesday that her patience with the protesters is at an end.

“[Federal officials] must move quickly to end the occupation and hold all of the wrongdoers accountable,” the governor said at a press conference in Salem, CBS News reported. “The residents of Harney County have been overlooked and underserved by federal officials’ response thus far. I have conveyed these very grave concerns directly to our leaders at the highest levels of our government: the U.S. Department of Justice and the White House.”

Brown estimated Bundy’s protesters have cost the state $100,000 per week in resources required by multiple local law enforcement entities.

“The residents of Harney County have been overlooked and underserved by federal officials’ response thus far,” Brown said, CNN reported. “This spectacle of lawlessness must end. And until Harney County is free of it I will not stop insisting that federal officials enforce the law.”

Bundy has held several press conferences at the site. Federal authorities say they want the situation peacefully resolved.

The London Daily Mail reported that Bundy had been communicating with a FBI negotiator and local law enforcement. He met with a federal agent Friday at the Burns Municipal Airport. But he left after the agent refused to speak in front of the media.

Developing …