An Oregon State Police detective was concerned that three agents with the FBI Hostage Rescue Team weren't candid when he interviewed them less than two weeks after the fatal shooting of Robert "LaVoy" Finicum, the spokesman for the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

It was the second time the agents talked to investigators and this time state police Det. Scott Hill aimed to find out who fired a bullet that had left a hole in the roof of Finicum's truck.

Investigators had determined who fired other shots that day: three that hit Finicum's pickup as it raced toward a highway roadblock on Jan. 26, 2016, and three that killed Finicum as he left the truck and reached inside his jacket where he had a loaded gun. State police officers were responsible for all six of those, detectives found.

Hill met with the FBI agents on Feb. 6, 2016, in the gym of the Burns middle school, the police command center during the refuge occupation.

The supervisor who led the Hostage Rescue Team's blue unit - identified in court only as B.M. -- demanded that Hill question he and two other agents only as a group.

Hill called the ultimatum "very odd,'' adding it wasn't something state police typically would do when investigating an officer-involved shooting. But he allowed it. He also acquiesced to their insistence not to record the interview.

"If I didn't go along with their demand, they would not have given us any interview at all,'' Hill testified Thursday at the federal trial in Portland of indicted FBI agent W. Joseph Astarita. "I felt at that time an interview would be better than no interview at all.''

The government contends Astarita fired two bullets at Finicum's truck just before state police fatally shot Finicum. One hit the roof and the other missed. Astarita is accused of making false statements and obstruction of justice in denying that he took the shots.

The trial is in its second week and is expected to last possibly another two. Testimony so far has revealed dramatic new details of what happened that day in accounts from state police and FBI agents who were there and the Oregon detectives tasked later with investigating the fatal confrontation. Defense attorneys are expected to present their side starting next week.

During the February interview, Hill said FBI agent John Neidert was the only one of the three agents who could give his location at the moment Finicum swerved into a snowbank at the roadblock on U.S. 395 and then got out of his truck. Neidert had narrowly missed getting hit by Finicum having jumped in the snowbank to get away.

Astarita and his boss, B.M., told Hill only that they were moving around the scene at that time and couldn't say exactly where they were standing, Hill said. Their answers were vague, he said.

That was in contrast to Astarita's initial statement on the night of the shooting, Hill said. Astarita told Hill then that he had moved into a position to rescue Neidert, who had ended up in the snow behind the rear wheel of Finicum's truck.

The three agents told Hill in the second interview that they were armed with Rock River Arms AR-15 platform rifles, loaded with .223-caliber rounds. Yet they couldn't provide the brand of the ammunition or the color of their casings, Hill said.

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

The interview lasted about 20 minutes, and Hill had shown the agents the FBI's aerial video that captured the shooting.

In the first interview, Hill said the FBI also didn't want the interviews recorded. The FBI also didn't provide some of the agents' full names, he said. He was told the agents were witnesses to the shooting but hadn't fired their own rifles.

Hill talked to Astarita for about 10 minutes in an old locker/storage room off the gym in the Burns middle school command post about 11 p.m. the night of the shooting, Hill said. Astarita was calm, relaxed and soft-spoken, he said.

Astarita told Hill he had been standing on a small ladder beside the engine of an FBI truck in a V-formation in the northbound lane at the roadblock outside of Burns when Finicum's truck headed their way.

Astarita believed Finicum was going to ram through the roadblock, so he ran to his left, the east side of the highway, Hill testified. Astarita said he watched his partner, Neidert, run in the opposite direction and thought he had gotten hit by Finicum's truck, according to Hill.

Once Finicum's truck plowed into the snowbank on the west side of the road, Astarita said Neidert was still in the snow, lying on his back. Astarita told Hill that he saw Finicum get out of the driver's side door, Hill said.

That's when Astarita said he moved toward Neidert to rescue him, Hill recounted. Astarita said he saw Finicum fall but didn't know who had shot him. Astarita described the encounter as a dynamic situation, that he had been moving around a lot and wasn't sure where he was at any point, except moving to rescue Neidert, Hill said.

Neidert already testified that he got out of the snowbank and ran for cover on his own.

Hill also went to Harney District Hospital where Ryan Bundy was taken by ambulance after Bundy reported getting hit while a rear passenger in Finicum's truck. Jurors were shown a photo of the bloody half-inch puncture wound in Bundy's upper right shoulder. Hill said whatever entered Bundy's arm wasn't removed at the hospital.

Further 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.

State police officers who arrived later to investigate the shooting pushed FBI agents and state police SWAT officers on the scene out of the immediate area about 8:15 p.m. that night. Later, they walked through the scene in a shoulder-to-shoulder line, looking for bullet casings, even checking holes in the snow on the sides of the highway to see if any metal fragments may have popped down one, officers testified.

It wasn't until the next day that state police and a Deschutes County sheriff's detective found two shell casings: one in the snow tracks after Finicum's truck was pulled from the snowbank and another located with a metal detector in those tracks that afternoon.

State trooper Michael Mayer also testified that he helped the medical examiner's office examine Finicum's body at the scene. Mayer said he rolled Finicum's body to his right side and could see the handle of his pistol sticking out of the inside pocket in his coat.

He said he later identified the gun as a loaded 9mm Ruger pistol that had one round in the chamber.

Jurors also learned that it took some state police investigators a long time to respond to the shooting scene because they took a round-about route from John Day to avoid what they were told could be "armed supporters who could be a danger to us,'' said state police Detective Sgt. Javier Marquez Jr. Their alternate route added two hours to their drive, and they ended up arriving from Seneca off U.S. 395, about 45 miles north of Burns.

In testimony Thursday afternoon, Charles McGinnis, who spent 11 years as the bureau's program manager for forensic science training for new agents at its Virginia academy, said he had Astarita in his class in 2005. McGinnis explained that he taught agents how to recognize evidence and the need to secure and protect a crime scene to ensure that nothing is lost, altered, moved or destroyed.

McGinnis, in response to a prosecutor's questions, said agents shouldn't be wandering around the scene of a crime scene or officer-involved shooting. If there's any items that they deem they need to remove for their or others' safety, they should alert a team leader and alert investigators so any changes to the scene are documented, he said.

Despite objections from Astarita's lawyers, prosecutors were allowed to show McGinnis the FBI's infrared aerial video that captured operators moving around the shooting scene after Finicum was killed on the night of Jan. 26, 2016. Sussman asked him if those actions are consistent with FBI protocol, and McGinnis said they were not.

Even if Astarita's supervisor had instructed him to look around the scene for sensitive items, would that comport with FBI evidence gathering standards? McGinnis again said they would not.

U.S. District Judge Robert E. Jones instructed jurors that they're not to assume the first lone figure in the infrared video is Astarita. That's something they'll have to decide themselves.

-- Maxine Bernstein

mbernstein@oregonian.com

503-221-8212

@maxoregonian