Eyewitness account by Shawna Cox of Lavoy Finicum being killed
Beacon Exclusive
by David Jaques
Harney County, Or-During a traffic stop on a deserted stretch of Hwy 395 in south eastern Oregon, LaVoy Finicum with four passengers in his truck came to a complete stop. Ryan Payne who was sitting in the front seat, stuck both hands out of the passenger window to demonstrate that he was unarmed and posed no threat to law enforcement. It was at that time, said Shawna Cox, a passenger in the back seat, that she heard shots ring out as a bullet hit the rear view mirror post on Payne’s side of the truck, right next to his outstretched hands. At first she thought the bullet had hit the metallic bracelet on his wrist. She said Payne, recoiling from the shot, jerked his arms back inside the vehicle.
The group was on their way to John Day, Oregon, for a scheduled pubic meeting with local ranchers, townspeople, and anyone interested in learning about what’d been going on in Harney County. In the truck with Finicum were Ryan Payne, Shawna Cox, Victoria Sharp (18years old), and Ryan Bundy.
After taking fire during the traffic stop, Payne told Finicum he wanted to get out; “These guys are serious” he said. Payne repeatedly told law enforcement as he exited the vehicle that there were women in the truck. Shawna Cox said she heard them shout back to send the women out. But the young Sharp girl was terrified and she told Finicum she wasn’t going to get out because they were being shot at. Cox said her motherly instinct kicked in and she said she wasn’t going to leave this young girl in the back seat unprotected. It was then that Finicum told law enforcement he was going to see the Sheriff, and Cox said he started off down the road.
Cox said she started trying to call or text to let others know what was going on, but there was no cell service. She said this seemed odd because right up till the time of the stop, she had actively been sending text messages and had cell service, “we just had it, and now we had nothing”. That’s when she said she knew they had been set up. Without cell service she decided she would start filming and trying to record what was happening with her camera.
When she asked LaVoy how far they had yet to go, he said about fifty miles. Cox said she thought about the vehicles in pursuit, wondering if their tires would get shot out by them. It was about that time that she said she couldn’t tell if LaVoy was hitting the brakes, or they were just plowing through slush, which was spraying up beside the rear truck windows. She said as they swerved she could see the vehicles in the middle of the road blocking their passage. She said as they swerved to avoid hitting them “we got stuck” in the snow. She said “immediately there are lasers everywhere, all over, and LaVoy jumps out, he flings open the door, and throws his hands in the air, and he jumps out and starts running through this deep snow. We can see him, and I have it on video, we’re just freaking out because there are bullets flying- he’s yelling “go ahead and shoot me, go ahead and shoot me”. I honestly believe that he was trying to draw fire away from us.” At this time during the interview she becomes emotional, holding back tears and continues, “LaVoy’s a father of many girls-he’s very protective. I think he was drawing the fire away from us.”
Cox said they were hunkered down in the back seat of the vehicle to avoid gunfire, but that she had her camera videoing what she could. “They’re shooting all the windows out. And we can’t get out, we’re pinned down.”
Ryan Bundy was trying to look out but they kept pushing him down as they continued to dodge the lasers and bullets. We knew they had killed LaVoy by then, but they were just trying to stay down to avoid being hit.
Cox said the window next to her head had been hit four or five times but that one hadn’t broke, which she said was a miracle of God’s protection. She said we just lay there and kept praying. She said the shooting went on for at least five or ten minutes it seemed, though there was no way to tell. She said that she and Victoria had been yelling for them to stop, but they wouldn’t stop shooting, and they had also fired some sort of gas into the vehicle, making it hard to breathe, and their eyes were burning.
Finally the shooting stopped and they told the man to get out. “I don’t think they knew it was Ryan Bundy.” And when Bundy got out he said “I got hit in the shoulder”. She said it was in his right shoulder.
After he got out, Cox said Victoria was next and they took both into custody. Then Cox said she was ordered out, and as she got out had to put down her phone camera and papers she was carrying.
As she and Victoria walked beside the vehicle they could see LaVoy laying dead in the snow. She said he was facing up. “He was laying back in the snow, and his feet were deep down in the snow, and he had his hands out like this [she had her arms stretched out]. The left had was out [to the side] and his right hand was kind of at his chest. His hat was still on.”
Then Cox tells how they were taken over to the other side of the truck and seated on the ground as they were cuffed. She said as they were walking they were asked repeatedly if anyone else was in the vehicle. Cox told them no, they were it. That’s when she said they opened fire again, this time shooting out the window where she had been sitting a few minutes ago.
Cox said she began telling the FBI and State Troopers present; “You murdered him in cold blood, he didn’t have a gun.” She remarked that he did not have a gun in his hand and though he typically carried a side arm on his right hip in a holster, a revolver, they didn’t take the guns to meetings, so she was sure she did not see him with a gun as he exited the vehicle, and he definitely did not have one in his hands.
She said as they looked over where LaVoy’s body lay, she could see “all these men coming out from behind the trees. I’ll bet you there were like twenty four of them. They had the long guns, and they had these caps like with binoculars’ that flip down. It was like this army; a battlefield.” Cox estimated that there were hundreds of rounds fired into their truck. “I believe they intended to kill us all”.
Cox said as they were lead down the road to be placed into a van, she told them again that they had murdered an innocent man and that she felt sorry for them, and she’d pray for them. They got in the van and sat there for a very long time, trying to keep warm.
They recognized that Ryan Bundy had been shot, so they called for an ambulance which picked him up.
Then, they took them back down the road to where the other vehicle that was travelling behind them was, and “there we saw Ammon and Booda and Mark and Ryan Payne, and they loaded them in the van with us.
She said then they just sat there for hours, in the back of this van. Cox asked if they were under arrest, and she was told “no, you’re just being detained”.
They were then all hauled back to Burns in the van. At that point they were all split up into SUV’s at a rest area and shuttled to Portland. Cox said they drove like “madmen” eighty miles an hour the whole way.
After three days in custody in Portland, Cox was released Friday night Jan 29th. She said she was just turned out in the lobby of the jail with nothing but a set of street clothes they gave her (not her own) and a $50 VISA card. She did not have her purse or identification, her credit cards, camera, cell phone, or any of her personal items. She had not signed any release forms, and was given no conditions for her release.
On Sunday she got a call from her attorney, a public defender, and was informed she had to come back to Portland (she was already on her way home to southern Utah) to get an ankle bracelet and sign a conditional release document.
She is basically on house arrest, confined to her own home until trial. She cannot be on any federally owned property except a Post Office, she cannot be in the presence of firearms, and she cannot contact any of her co-defendants.
On a separate but related issue, her husband was informed there could be no firearms in the house upon her return, so he took them to a family member’s home for safe keeping. Her son-in law stored them in a shop-office building on the property near his home and was working outside that day on a piece of equipment. He went inside to get warm by the woodstove, and Shawna said they believe something ignited, and the building went up in flames. By the time her daughter, who was down at the house, became aware of the fire the emergency vehicles were pulling up.
Absolute chaos was the way the scene was described by her daughter, as bullets were going off, they couldn’t get to her husband and he perished in the fire which consumed the entire structure. Cox said that much speculation has been out there about the tragedy being related, but she said the family believes it was “just a terrible accident” and that they do not suspect foul play.