This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Don Cox said he didn't know that his wife, Shawna, had delayed her return from eastern Oregon to photograph a meeting between armed occupants of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and their supporters. He had thought — until he called and called and got no answer — that she was on her way back to Kanab.
Shawna Cox was instead arrested with six others after witnessing the fatal shooting of Robert "LaVoy" Finicum alongside Highway 395.
Days later, shortly after her release from jail, her son-in-law died in an unrelated shop fire.
Don Cox said he expects his wife's overdue return after a Wednesday morning court appearance. She hopes to attend Finicum's Kanab funeral Friday and son-in-law Logan Brown's on Saturday.
"This has been a difficult week," Don Cox said. "We're just taking it day by day."
Shawna Cox is the lone alleged occupier among 11 arrested in the past week to have left jail. Four occupants remain at the refuge.
Saying she expected to be issued a gag order, she spoke Sunday with Dave Hodges' "The Common Sense Show" and Rick Koerber's "End Times News." A Salt Lake Tribune interview request had not been answered as of Monday afternoon.
Cox told interviewers she was sitting in the rear of the white truck driven by Finicum as he tried to drive around a roadblock. When the vehicle became stuck, she said, Finicum jumped out into waist-deep snow and began to run, yelling, "Just shoot me then."
"I really believe that he had the intention to draw the fire away from us, because they had laser [sights] all over the place," she told "The Common Sense Show."
She said Finicum was fired upon immediately — as was the vehicle, which then contained herself, Ryan Bundy and a woman who was not charged.
Once the truck's occupants were on the side of the road in handcuffs, she said, the truck was again riddled with bullets.
That account is harrowing, Don Cox said. "How would people feel if that was their wife or grandmother or mother?"
FBI Special Agent in Charge Greg Bretzing told media last week that Oregon State Police shot Finicum after he reached his right hand toward a pocket inside his jacket, where he was later found to have a loaded 9mm semiautomatic handgun.
Bretzing said agents and troopers also found two loaded .223-caliber semiautomatic rifles and a loaded .38 special revolver inside the truck.
Don Cox said his wife's intent upon leaving for Oregon was to support Harney County ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond, a father and son sentenced to five years in prison for a series of fires on Bureau of Land Management lands.
"Shawna's got a head of her own, and I really didn't want her to go up there, but she's got a good heart and she's a patriot," he said. "There was no talk about militia."
Shawna Cox is the author of a book about Cliven Bundy, a Nevada rancher who forced a 2014 standoff with the Bureau of Land Management. He is the father of Ammon and Ryan Bundy, who were taken into custody along with Cox on Tuesday.
She left jail at 8:15 p.m. Friday, according to Multnomah County Sheriff's Lt. Steve Alexander. Don Cox said she called him at about 11 p.m. MST to say she had been "turned out" with only some secondhand clothes. Fifteen minutes later, he received a phone call from his daughter, saying Logan Brown had been killed in a fire at 510 N. 100 West in Kanab.
Authorities later determined that the fire was caused by a faulty wood stove.
Shawna Cox told "The Common Sense Show" that Brown fell asleep in a chair by the stove after having earlier that day stored her household's guns in the shop, as a condition of her release.
"I was torn in half," she said on "The Common Sense Show."
Cox had intended to return to Kanab this weekend, but three hours into her drive, she received a call from her attorney, saying she needed to sign the conditions of her release and be given a GPS ankle monitor. She was unable to do that until Monday, Don Cox said, and will now wait until Wednesday's appearance.
The release order limits Cox's travel to Kanab; Fredonia, Ariz.; and Multnomah County. She is on home detention and must avoid contact with co-defendants.
Twitter: @matthew_piper