The son of a Nevada rancher who was at the center of an armed stand-off with federal agents in a dispute over cattle grazing rights last year has been arrested in Utah, officials said.
Ryan Bundy, 42, was taken into custody by sheriff's deputies serving an arrest warrant while he was at the Iron County Justice Court for a separate case on Tuesday, the Iron County Sheriff's Office said in a statement.
Bundy physically and verbally resisted the deputies, who eventually subdued him and booked him into county jail on the warrant for interfering with an officer and the additional charge of resisting arrest, the statement said.
“I got a summons to go to court in Cedar City on some kind of nuisance charge,” said Ryan Bundy, of Bunkerville, Nevada. “It says it stems from having a vehicle stored on my property without proper registration. I don’t know what the heck they’re talking about.”
Authorities said the warrant was issued after Bundy failed to appear in court when he was charged with interfering with an animal control officer.
The Bundy family ranch in Bunkerville, some 80 miles (129 km) northeast of Las Vegas, was the site of an armed protest against the U.S. Bureau of Land Management last April.
The stand-off gained nationwide attention as the agency sought to seize cattle because elder Bundy, Cliven Bundy, refused to pay grazing fees. The federal agents ultimately backed down, citing safety concerns, and gave back hundreds of Bundy's cattle which they had rounded up.
Another Bundy child, Cliven Lance Bundy, was arrested in Las Vegas on a probation violation last August, stemming from a guilty plea he made a year prior to counts of burglary and theft of a firearm.
(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Toby Chopra)
