Shawna Cox heading home soon, husband says
The Oregonian/OregonLive By Elliot Njus
January 31, 2016
KANAB, Utah — Shawna Cox will be fitted with an ankle monitor on Monday and is expected to return home to Utah, her husband said Sunday.
Don Cox said his wife was released late Friday night but remains in Portland. She and 10 other participants in the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon have been charged with conspiracy to impede federal officers from their official duties through use of force, intimidation or threats.
Cox's husband said he wasn't sure why she was released.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Stacie F. Beckerman on Friday had ordered the release of Shawna Cox, 59, and another defendant, but it was contingent on the departure of the remaining four occupiers at the wildlife refuge.
It's not clear what changed.
Shawna Cox arraignment sketchArraignment in federal court of Shawna Cox.
Multnomah County Jail records show the other defendant, Joseph Oshaugnhessy, still in custody. The judge denied release for five other defendants including leader Ammon Bundy, finding that they were central figures in the four-week standoff.
Don Cox spoke briefly to a reporter outside the family's one-story home on the outskirts of Kanab, Utah, a city of 4,500 situated just north of the Arizona state line. It's two hours from Bunkerville, Nevada, where rancher Cliven Bundy led a standoff with federal agents in 2014. Shawna Cox was present at that confrontation, as well.
Kanab is also where memorial services will be held on Feb. 5 for Robert "LaVoy" Finicum, who was killed by police in the same traffic stop where Cox was taken into custody Jan. 26.
Don Cox wouldn't say much about the confrontation with police that unfolded as the group was driving to a community meeting in John Day.
"It was a cowardly thing they did, ambushing my wife in that truck."
"It was a cowardly thing they did, ambushing my wife in that truck," he said. "There you have a woman who has 12 kids."
"It's amazing she didn't get killed," he said of his wife, adding that police "meant to kill them."
Shawna Cox presented her detailed version of the traffic stop in a recorded interview that a conservative activist posted on Saturday. In it, she said Finicum told officers before he died, "Just shoot me."
Cox's husband said the family planned to hire "a big expensive legal team" to fight the charges against her.
Don Cox also said his wife isn't a terrorist or anti-government.
"But there's some things in the government that are not right," he said. "This has always been about putting God back in American and back in our schools."
He said police kept his wife's wedding ring, cell phone, wallet and the clothes she was wearing when she was arrested before releasing her around 11 p.m. She can't get on a plane home because police kept her identification.
