FBI closing in on last 4 at standoff in Oregon

PORTLAND, Ore. — The FBI surrounded the last four occupiers of a wildlife refuge in eastern Oregon on Wednesday night as the holdouts argued with a negotiator and yelled at law enforcement officers in armored vehicles to back off.

The standoff between law enforcement officers and the four occupiers was being livestreamed on the Internet by an acquaintance of one of the holdouts, David Fry.

Fry, 27, of Blanchester, Ohio, continually yelled, at times hysterically, at what he said was an FBI negotiator.

“We’re innocent people camping at a public facility, and you’re going to murder us,” Fry said.

“The only way we’re leaving here is dead or without charges,” Fry said, who told the FBI to “get the hell out of Oregon.”

Fry said the group was surrounded by armored vehicles.

Fry and the three others are the last remnants of an armed group that seized the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge on Jan. 2 to oppose federal land-use policies. The three others are Jeff Banta, 46, of Elko, Nevada; and married couple Sean Anderson, 48, and Sandy Anderson, 47, of Riggins, Idaho.

A Nevada legislator, Michele Fiore, called to try to get the occupiers to calm down.

“I need you guys alive,” said the Republican member of the Nevada Assembly, who was in Portland to show support for Ammon Bundy, the jailed leader of the occupation. Fiore told occupiers Wednesday night that she was driving to the refuge to try to help negotiate their exit.

Greg Bretzing, special agent in charge of the FBI in Oregon, said in a statement that the situation had reached a point where it “became necessary to take action” to ensure the safety of all involved.

The occupiers said they saw snipers on a hill and a drone.

The standoff was occurring on the 40th day of the occupation, started by Bundy and his followers to protest prison terms for two ranchers on arson charges and federal management of public lands.

Bundy was arrested on Jan. 26 on a remote road as he and other main figures of the occupation were traveling to the town of John Day. Four others also were arrested in that confrontation, which resulted in the shooting death of the group’s spokesman, Robert “LaVoy” Finicum. The FBI said Finicum was reaching for a gun.