I believe he had already run a roadblock at that point, inviting a felony stop. You don’t want to invite a felony stop. That the PO’s were ready for it, in a place of their choosing, makes it easy to kill him, if that was their goal.
He had NOT run a roadblock. Unknown people had come up behind him, and I believe he stopped to see what was what. I don't think they stopped him from behind.
That's when one of the unknowns fired upon the truck when Ryan Payne stuck his hands out the window. Now, the apologists want to contend that the shot was a "non-lethal round", but that's a lot of hooey. If the shoe was on the other foot, the local DA would have the shooter up on attempted murder charges so fast it would make the peasant's head swim. So, we can dismiss that contention. The unknowns shot at Finicum.
So, Finicum apparently got pumped up, and started daring the shooters to shoot him, since they'd already tried once.
The apologists contend that he was asking for suicide-by-cop. I disagree - I see an honest man reacting to unidentified lawless highwaymen. The unknowns finally identify themselves as "Oregon State police", which is why I posted the WTF - state police don't slink around in the woods out of uniform, in my experience.
Eventually, Finicum decides to seek REAL law enforcement - the Sheriff that they were going to meet with originally.
He proceeds down the road at a good clip, just over normal highweay speed (about 60 mph - another freeper did an analysis of the video) - and rounds a blind corner to discover the road completely blocked by more unknown vehicles. He instantly brakes, but realizes he's going too fast to stop for the poorly set roadblock. So he dives for the ditch.
As they come to a stop, Finicum bounces out of the truck as an fbi sniper tries to shoot him through the driver's side passenger window. You can see the glass shatter as Finicum moves by it on the in-truck cellphone video.
His hands are raised, so they're trying to kill an unarmed, surrendering man.
We can totally disregard the narrative advanced by the fbi SAC Bretzing, since he was undoubtedly aware at the time of the phony press conference that his man has discharged a couple of shots at Finicum - and he knew when those shots were fired.
Now that the fbi people have been busted by the Deschutes County Sheriff, it changes the game.
In relation to the incompetently positioned roadblock around the blind curve:
Three Supreme Court cases are used in the discussion of roadblocks:
> Brower v. County of Inyo
> City of Canton, Ohio v. Harris
> Tennessee v. Garner
A quote from a discussion paper from the DOJ:
Fixed roadblocks, which block road to extent that little or no outlet remains.
"Fixed roadblocks are extremely dangerous and are rarely justifiable."
They set up around a blind curve. It's not going to go well for them in civil court. :)