It was five years; this day in 1992, that a standoff between Federal agents and a band of separatist/militia members became a rallying cry for armed militia groups all over the country.
A friend of white separatist Randy Weaver was to be charged with murder for killing a deputy US marshal and an FBI agent was to be charged with manslaughter for killing Weaver’s wife in the standoff at Ruby Ridge five years ago a newspaper reported today. Boundary County Deputy Prosecutor Todd Reed did not disclose details but said his office would make an announcement about its Ruby Ridge investigation today. But the Spokesman-Review newspaper of Spokane reported that Prosecutor Denise Woodbury planned to charge Weaver’s friend Kevin Harris with first-degree murder-in the shocking death of Deputy US Marshal William Degan and FBI sniper Lon Horfiichi with manslaughter in the death af Weaver’s wife Vicki.
The August 1992 standoff at the Weavers’ remote cabin began after federal agents tried to arrest Randy Weaver for failing to appear in court to face charges of selling two illegal sawed-off shotguns. Weaver had refused to leave his family’s cabin and a shootout began when the Weavers spotted camouflaged agents doing surveillance nearby.
Meanwhile Carl Drega, the cool-headed killer who gunned down four people before being he killed himself left hundreds of pounds of bomb making ingredients on his Columbia NH property suggesting he may have been aiming for a far higher body count when he launched his deadly rampage. Authorities found 650 pounds of ammonium nitrate in three -outbuildings on Carl Drega’s property and feared more might be found in booby traps in “a fairly elaborate system of tunnels” built beneath and adjacent to the buildings. Michael Ramsdell an associate attorney general in New Hampshire said Wednesday Drega 67 carrying a grudge and an assault rifle killed four people and wounded four others during a four-hour shooting spree Tuesday in northern New Hampshire and Vermont. Although Drega burned his house down in the midst of the rampage left standing were a three-story barn and two other structures Inside police found the the ammonium nitrate a fertilizer and 61 gallons of diesel fuel – the same explosive ingredients used in the World Trade Center and Oklahoma City bombings.
And finally – Thousands of United Parcel Service workers ready to go back to work yesterday were laid off instead as the delivery giant sluggishly began recovering from a 15-day Teamsters strike. “All of our jobs depend on our volume level” UPS spokesman Rick Warlick said. “Certainly as we go back to work as our volume picks up we will add workers. Any businesses that have gone away as a result of the strike may mean fewer jobs”. The company didn’t immediately release any nationwide figures on layoffs but workers were sent home or told not to report in several locations from Atlanta to Portland Ore.
And while the Ruby Ridge hearings continue, that’s just a little of what happened, this 21st of August in 1997 as reported by The CBS World News Roundup.
