The Oregonian/OregonLive file

Here are highlights from the second week of the federal trial in Portland of FBI agent W. Joseph Astarita, accused of lying about firing two shots at the truck of Robert “LaVoy” Finicum.

They include testimony from the Oregon State Police officers who fatally shot Finicum and FBI agents who were next to Astarita that day.

Finicum was the spokesman for the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. He died on Jan. 26, 2016, when the FBI and state police arrested two carloads of occupation leaders as they drove away from the refuge on U.S. 395 to go to a community meeting in the next county.

Investigators said they can account for six of eight shots at Finicum. Three bullets hit his truck as he sped toward a roadblock on the highway. Another three shots killed Finicum when he walked away from his truck at the roadblock and reached inside his jacket where detectives said they later found a loaded pistol. All of the bullets were fired by two state police SWAT officers, investigators said.

The investigators – members of a multi-agency task force led by Deschutes County sheriff’s detectives to review what happened -- believe someone fired two other shots in between the others. One bullet hit the roof of Finicum’s truck the moment he got out with his hands up after swerving his truck into a snowbank at the roadblock. Another missed. Prosecutors say Astarita fired the two shots. He has denied it.

So far, only prosecutors have called witnesses. The defense case is expected to start this week.

Testimony at Astarita’s trial revealed:

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Deborah Marble

(FBI agent W. Joseph Astarita is on the left next to two of his lawyers.)

1. “Officer 1,” the state police officer who fired five of the six accounted-for shots at Finicum, said he at first second-guessed himself and wondered if he was responsible for the disputed shots.

"I never thought I did it, but there were times I was thinking, 'I don't know. This doesn't make any sense,''' he said.

When he learned investigators had tracked all his shots and the magazine of his AR-15 rifle was missing five bullets, he said he told them: "The FBI has a big effing problem, and this is serious.''

He and “Officer 2,” the other state SWAT officer who fired the sixth accounted-for shot at Finicum, are going by the pseudonyms because of government concerns over militia threats.

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Rick Bowmer/The Associated Press

(Robert "LaVoy" Finicum often talked to reporters covering the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.)

2. Officer 1 said he shot at Finicum’s truck because he thought Finicum was going to slam into the roadblock.

Three shots hit the front of the truck.

After Finicum’s truck crashed, Officer 1 crossed from the northbound lane to the southbound lane of the highway and said he was startled by a loud noise to his right that could have been a gunshot as Finicum stepped from his truck. Defense lawyers pointed out that Officer 1 never mentioned that until he met with prosecutors a month before the trial.

Officer 1 said once Finicum walked away from his truck, he saw Finicum put his hands toward the center of his body. He then saw Finicum turn away from him and toward a state trooper in the tree line holding a Taser. He saw Finicum make a "sweeping motion'' and reach with his right hand into his jacket, where Officer 1 said he believed Finicum kept a gun in a shoulder harness.

"I felt at that moment I had to use lethal force'' to protect the other trooper and himself, he said. He fired twice, both bullets hitting Finicum in the back.

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3. Officer 2 was in a truck that chased after Finicum as he fled from an initial police stop on the highway toward the roadblock a mile north.





Officer 2 radioed ahead to Officer 1, who was stationed at the roadblock.





Officer 2 said he relayed that Finicum yelled that he wasn't going to surrender and that police would have to shoot him.





When he arrived at the roadblock, Officer 2 said he saw Finicum outside of his truck. He said he saw Finicum's hands initially in the air but then he saw him reach with his right hand across his body to the left interior of his jacket.





"I believe he was attempting to grab a firearm,'' Officer 2 testified. If Finicum reached again into his jacket, Officer 2 decided he'd have to fire, he said. When Finicum did, "At that point, I fired." He shot once, also hitting Finicum.

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The Oregonian/OregonLive/File

(Robert "LaVoy" Finicum's truck.)

4. Officer 1 exchanged text messages about the shooting with another state SWAT officer, Joey Pollard, a witness to the shooting, and his boss, Travis Hampton, now state police superintendent, before his interview with investigators.

His first interview came five days after the shooting.

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The Oregonian/OregonLive/File

(A law enforcement sketch shows the shots that hit the truck driven by Robert "LaVoy" Finicum.)

5. An FBI supervisor, Ian McConnell, said Astarita gave him a "flippant response'' when he first asked him at the scene of the shooting if members of the agency's Hostage Rescue Team were OK and if they had fired their guns.

Astarita replied: "Hey bro, I'm good" or "You don't got to ask me that,'' according to McConnell.

"That response was a pet peeve of mine,'' McConnell said. "I took it as a flippant response.” He alerted his supervisor of the response that night but said he didn’t think Astarita was trying to deceive him.

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The Oregonian/OregonLive/File

(A bullet hole in the roof of the truck driven by Robert "LaVoy "Finicum.)

6. State police SWAT trooper Jeremiah Beckert said he was standing near Astarita at the scene and Astarita was "unusually amped up,'' moving around a lot and "barking commands.''

His reaction was in marked contrast to other officers at the scene who were calm and collected, Beckert said.

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The Oregonian/OregonLive/File

(A law enforcement sketch shows the first several shots fired at the truck driven by Robert "LaVoy" Finicum. )

7. Oregon State Police trooper Bob Olson testified that he saw an unusual "nice neat pile'' of less-lethal 40 mm rounds beside the front left tire of a white state police truck parked in the middle of the roadblock.

The pile was near "two to three'' brass-colored rifle casings he’d noticed as officers tried to arrest passengers in Finicum's truck, he said.

But later that evening, Olson said, the brass rifle casings were gone.

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8. Timothy Swanson, chief of the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team's blue unit that Astarita was on, was monitoring the stop of the refuge leaders via a live video feed from the FBI aerial plane while in Boise, Idaho.

A day and a half later, once in Burns, he learned there was an unaccounted-for bullet strike to Finicum's truck and an "inference'' or "insinuation'' that rifle brass casings had been picked up from the scene.

Swanson said he met with each of his agents individually and as a group and asked them if they had fired. Astarita and the others all said they hadn’t.

Swanson, though, never asked the agents if they had picked up any shell casings at the scene.

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Mark Graves/The Oregonian/OregonLive

9. Officer 1’s last name was said aloud in court by another state SWAT officer.

The slip-up led to social media posts by Finicum supporters with the officer’s full name.

Jeanette Finicum, Finicum's widow, criticized the sharing of the officer's real name on social media. She said she has relatives in law enforcement and four sons in the military and understands the security concerns of state police.

Ammon Bundy, the occupation's lead organizer, also weighed in. He urged supporters to consider several things "before someone goes and hangs this guy." He said the officer was following orders and had been briefed by federal officials that the refuge occupiers were dangerous.

"I pray for him and hope he can see what he is doing," Bundy wrote. "He is a brainwashed man who has been fed lies his entire adult life about what it really is to defend freedom."

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The Oregonian/OregonLive/File

(Robert "LaVoy" Finicum appears in a video frame from a mobile phone video shot by Shawna Cox who was in the truck driven by Finicum the day he was fatally shot, along with law enforcement surveillance footage.)

10. State police Detective Scott Hill said Astarita and two other members of the Hostage Rescue Team were vague and dismissive during his second interview of them about a week and a half after the shooting.

They insisted on a group interview this time and demanded that it not be recorded, Hill said.

Two of them, including Astarita, said they didn’t know where they were standing when Finicum stepped out of his truck with his hands up. And all three couldn’t provide the brand of the ammunition they used or the color of the casings, Hill said.

Hill said it was very unusual that the highly trained agents wouldn't know their positions at the scene or the make and color of their casings.

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The Oregonian/OregonLive/File

( Still frame from a video released by the FBI on Jan. 28, 2016, shows Robert "LaVoy" Finicum (center) moments before he was fatally shot by Oregon State Police on Jan. 26, 2016.)

11. Other testimony revealed that investigators found just two of the shell casings from the eight shots fired at the scene.

That was in stark contrast to the multiple less-lethal cartridges that littered the highway lanes from 40mm pepper spray and rubber rounds fired at Finicum's pickup and windows, and three flash-bang grenades and two pins.

Jurors were shown an FBI infrared video that investigators say caught the FBI Hostage Rescue Team agents walking around the shooting scene, looking under and around trucks, for evidence.

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The Oregonian/OregonLive/File

(This is the gun recovered from Robert "LaVoy" Finicum at the scene after he was fatally shot.)

12. Deschutes County sheriff's Detective Ron Brown, the lead case agent in the shooting investigation, said Finicum's pistol was loaded with a round in the chamber.

Finicum had two spare 9mm magazines of ammunition in the right inside pocket of his jacket. In his truck, a loaded .38-caliber revolver was found on the rear driver's side floorboard, and two loaded AR-15-style rifles were under the back seat.

Brown testified that he contacted Ryan Bundy, who suffered a wound to his shoulder in the back seat of Finicum's truck, to try to convince him to have the "metal fragment or whatever it may be'' removed. "It could be a fragment of a bullet that can be traced back ... and help determine where it came from," Brown said.

But Bundy either refused or made "completely unreasonable demands,'' he said, such as wanting certain people criminally charged.

-- Maxine Bernstein

mbernstein@oregonian.com

503-221-8212

@maxoregonian