Morning update from Oregon Public Broadcasting:
Leaders of the occupation at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge – including Ammon and Ryan Bundy – were arrested along Highway 395 between the towns of John Day and Burns, according to the FBI and Oregon State Police.
Police said those arrested will face felony charges. All of the individuals arrested in Oregon were booked into Multnomah County Jail around 2 a.m. Wednesday.
With the armed occupiers’ leadership in custody and another dead, the future of the occupation is unclear.
The FBI has yet to confirm the man killed was LaVoy Finicum, known as “Blue Tarp Man” since an interview with MSNBC went viral earlier this month in which he was seen hiding under a blue tarp with a gun in his lap. On January 6, Finicum told NBC News there was no way he'd go to jail:
Asked if he would rather be killed than be arrested — were the occupation to turn violent — 54-year-old occupier LaVoy Finicum, said: "Absolutely ... I have no intention of spending any of my days in a concrete box."
"There are things more important than your life and freedom is one of them," he said. "I'm prepared to defend freedom."
Militant Jon Ritzheimer had left the armed occupation to visit his family in Arizona and he turned himself in (at the FBI’s request) last night:
Many of the militants took off from the refuge, but Blaine Cooper, David Fry and an unknown other number of people are still armed at the wildlife refuge and are vowing to fight with the FBI, who gave them a deadline of 4 AM PDT to surrender. That deadline has come and gone and the militants are still occasionally live streaming. They could be heard on the broadcast overnight saying they were prepared to die at the refuge and hoped the live stream would capture the events.
Stay tuned for updates.