UPDATED Jan. 31 to correct Robert "LaVoy" Finicum's age.
Robert "LaVoy" Finicum was killed in a shooting Tuesday while traveling from the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge to John Day for a public meeting, sources have told The Oregonian/OregonLive.
It was one day before his 55th birthday, which his wife had traveled from Arizona to celebrate.
Finicum, 54, gave reporters the first tours of the occupied grounds at the refuge. He frequently represented Ammon Bundy, the occupation's most public face, at news conferences.
Finicum gained the nickname "Tarp Man" from some media outlets early in the occupation after he did a series of interviews one frigid evening with a blue tarp over his head. With a gun in his lap, Finicum said he'd rather die than be arrested.
Finicum rode in support of Cliven Bundy at the 2014 Nevada standoff where the Bundys challenged federal land managers, he said in an interview with the St. George News in Utah.
Finicum was a rancher in Northern Arizona, along the Utah border. He was involved in his own dispute with federal land management authorities over a grazing permit he has held since 2009. Finicum's allotment, nearly 17,000 acres, was primarily administered by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. His 2014 grazing fee was $1,126, which he paid in advance.
The dispute centered on when Finicum was permitted to graze. The permit allowed 161 cattle to graze from October through May, but the BLM said Finicum was found grazing his cattle on the land in August, outside of the authorized period.
Finicum filed for bankruptcy in Arizona in 2002, public records show.
He wrote a novel called "Only by Blood and Suffering: Regaining Lost Freedom," which is for sale on Amazon.
Arianna Finicum Brown, 26, one of Finicum's daughters, said Tuesday that she hadn't been concerned for her father's safety during his time at the wildlife refuge.
"I talked to him, and he said they were telling people to go if they weren't there for the right reasons, they didn't want anyone there who could make everything go bad," she said. "He had no plans to be violent. My dad was a really good guy."
Although one of her sisters had been worried during the occupation, Brown said that as of Tuesday afternoon she was sure the standoff would end peacefully.
By Tuesday evening, however, the family members who were updating Finicum's Facebook page were asking for their followers' prayers.
That message followed another earlier post from Tuesday as Finicum's wife, Jeanette, bid farewell to the refuge.
"I had a wonderful time in Oregon with wonderful, dedicated, hard working people," she wrote in the post at noon on Tuesday. "I have so much respect for everyone there who loves our Country so much to put ALL on the line."
-- Carli Brosseau, Fedor Zarkhin, Laura Gunderson and Lynne Palombo
CORRECTION: Robert "LaVoy" Finicum was 54 at the time of his death. An earlier version of this post listed an incorrect age.
Ad Choices