NBC

Armed Oregon Occupiers Announce Community Meeting

An armed group that has occupied a wildlife refuge in Oregon for more than a week plan to hold a community meeting on Friday to explain why they took over a building there and when they will leave.

LaVoy Finicum, one of the protesters at the of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, announced the meeting Tuesday, the eleventh day since the group took over a federal building there and demanded the government turn over federal land to local control.

Finicum said the meeting would be held in the town of Burns at 7 p.m., NBC affiliate KTVZ reported.

Finicum, a rancher from Arizona, covered himself with a tarp and waited with his rifle for federal agents — who never arrived — on Dec. 5 after a false rumor of an impending crackdown circulated among occupiers. He suggested then that he'd rather be killed than arrested and imprisoned.

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