Federal Fugitive Shoots, Kills Marshal in Idaho Mountains

A U.S. marshal was shot and killed Friday while trying to arrest a federal fugitive holed up in a remote mountaintop cabin, a sheriff’s deputy said.

Marshals and police evacuated about 30 residents from the area near Ruby Ridge, about 40 miles south of the Canadian border, sheriff’s Deputy Lonnie Ekstrom said. The identity of the slain marshal was not immediately released.

Authorities say Ruby Ridge is where Randy Weaver, 44, has lived in self-imposed exile since February, 1991, when he failed to appear for trial on a federal weapons charge.

Federal agents said in March that Weaver had ties to the white supremacist organization Aryan Nations. He was indicted in Boise in December, 1990, on federal firearms charges for allegedly selling sawed-off shotguns to an undercover agent.

Weaver was arrested by Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents, but authorities said he returned to his cabin the following month after a federal magistrate released him on his own recognizance.

Weaver has said his exile would only end with the deaths of himself and his family or an admission by authorities that he was set up on the weapons charge.

“All they have against us is government-paid informants who can get on the stand and say anything they want,” he said in an interview in May with the North Idaho News Network, which publishes three daily newspapers in the area.