I feel compelled to respond to Mrs. Durst as she has raised several interesting points.
1. I have the utmost respect for the commitment and sacrifices of those that have served our country in the military forces. And it also takes great commitment to graduate Magna Cum Laude. However, neither of those accomplishments stops someone from being a bully prone to violence and that is exactly what Mr. Durst is.
2. Your husband was riding “on” a Yamaha Raptor racing ATV. The only dust on the road that could have caused confusion for anyone was created by Mr. Durst coming out of the rangeland, jumping the burm at the side of the road and spinning circles in front of our pickup on the gravel road that we were trying to drive down. The children were off the road riding on the rangeland.
3. When three adult men came down the road to talk to us, there wasn’t anything said about the children. They were extremely agitated and belligerent that we had driven through their group. They let us know that they were blocking the road and we would “Play hell getting out” and Mr. Durst yelled “I’m going to kick your ass old man”. We were parked at the end of a dead end road and there wasn’t any other way out. When Mr. Durst came back down the road into our camp about 2 minutes later riding his racing ATV at a high rate of speed and attacked us, we were reasonable in assuming our lives were in danger.
4. Yes Marvin fired a warning shot, someone from Durst’s own party testified to that fact during grand jury. After the warning shot, Mr. Durst turned his quad and rode straight towards Marvin. Again someone from Durst’s own party testified to that. There were two rounds missing from the clip along with two empty casings retrieved by OSP at the scene.
5. When we tried to leave the area to go to the Sheriff’s office, the road was blocked with vehicles and they were not going to let us through. Even though we advised them we wanted to go to the Sheriff’s office and report the incident, it was still a couple of minutes before someone in the Durst party told the others to move their vehicles so that we could get through.
6. Anyone familiar with the area and highway know that a large pickup and camper isn’t able to drive the road at 80 mph and it was only 16.1 miles (verified with a GPS) from the location of the shooting until traffic was stopped on the highway. When we were stopped, we were a dozen or so vehicles behind Durst. Because of the false 911 call placed by someone in Durst’s party, we were approached aggressively on the highway by law enforcement officials with guns drawn and taken into custody.
7. The Durst party had barricaded the road and threatened us with bodily harm. They had total control of the situation. Marvin doesn’t consider himself a hero for his actions. He did what was necessary given the life-threatening circumstances.
8. The Oregon State Police and the Baker County Sheriff’s office investigated the incident and in addition to the Baker County District Attorney’s office and citizens of Baker County felt Marvin’s actions were reasonable
9. Everyone involved in this incident lost, there were no winners. Especially the children that were encouraged to vandalize federal property, witnessed the intimidation and terrorizing actions of the adults in their party and witnessed the serious consequences for those actions.
10. And Mrs. Durst is right; no one likes to have lies written about yourself or a loved one. And the victim always says “but it wasn’t my fault!”. But who is really the victim?