Lessons From the Oregon Standoff Arrests and Killing; Snipers in the Trees

1. The government will always escalate.

2. Direct confrontations with the government are almost always a bad idea.

Here's an eyewitness account from Victoria Sharp who was in the car when LaVoy Finicum was shot dead. In the car were Sharp, LaVoy Finicum was killed by federal agents on January 26, 2016. The young lady's voice that you're going to hear was in the car with LaVoy, Ryan Payne, Ryan Bundy, and Shawna Cox.

 Here's a Flo Hoffman summary of the Sharp eyewitness account:

 Burns, Oregon.... Victoria Sharp, who was in the car with Finicum when the group were pulled over by cops and federal agents. Sharp claims that Finicum put his hands out of the car window and asked the police to allow the women to leave the car. “They shot at him, but they missed him,” said Sharp, adding that the group then attempted to drive away in the car but were shot at again by police. “When we crashed and stopped for a second, he got out of the car, he had his hands in the air, he’s like ‘just shoot me then’….and they did, they shot him dead,” said Sharp. “He was just walking, with his hands in the air, I swear to God, and they shot him dead and after he was down on the ground, shot him three more times,” said Sharp, adding that the vehicle was again “bombarded with bullets” as well as tear gas rounds. Sharp says that the group tried to “find something white” so they could display it as a sign of surrender. She challenges news reports that only six shots were fired, asserting, “they shot at least 120 shots altogether.” Sharp also claims that none of the individuals in the car pulled out a gun at any point and that the incident was an “ambush” with “FBI snipers in the trees” surrounding the vehicle. “They had their hands out of the window to show they were not firing, nothing, we showed no aggression at all,” said Sharp. Protesters who remain at the occupied federal building have vowed to continue their stance as authorities continue to insist they want a “peaceful” resolution to the matter. 

The full account in Sharp's own words:

   -RW

(ht Martin Hill)