Burns residents light candles, react to killing, arrests

A long 24 hours toward the end of a long month in Harney County ended Wednesday night with a candlelight vigil in downtown Burns. Community members were seen holding candles and some held posters of LaVoy Finicum, the man shot and killed during Tuesday’s militia traffic stop and arrests.

Earlier Wednesday, after a community meeting was held in downtown Burns, the parents of Harney County Sheriff David Ward spoke with NewsChannel 21’s Dani Fried regarding the safety of their son and his family.

“I’m proud of him,” Lynda Ward said.

The Wards expressed their worries about being followed after the militia began their takeover several weeks ago.

Although the standoff has been difficult for many people in the Burns community, the Wards said it’s been especially tough on the sheriff’s wife and children, ages 10 and 8.

“They were threatening to kidnap him and hang him. Our little granddaughter was having bad dreams about it. She said ‘I dreamt they were going to hang my papa,'” Jim Ward said.

Erin Maupin, a longtime rancher in Harney County, said she received a phone call from a friend, saying an 18-year-old woman named Victoria Sharp, who was accompanying Ammon Bundy and Finicum Tuesday night, was at the sheriff’s office in Burns and needed someone to pick her up.

“I called the sheriff’s department, and they told me that the FBI had taken her to Safeway. So my husband, myself and two other people went to Safeway to find her,” Maupin said.

Although we cannot confirm Maupin’s story, she said Sharp described the arrest of the people she was in the car with, as well as Finicum’s death.

“And as they were going, they were shooting at the vehicle. LaVoy got out with his hands in the air and said, ‘If you’re going to shoot me, just shoot me!’ And they did. They shot him three times, according to Victoria,” Maupin said.

According to Maupin, Sharp was the only one in the car Tuesday who is not in prison or dead.