TONASKET — Court documents say a man accused of running over two people, killing one of them, after a confrontation in Okanogan County has ties to the militia movement.
James Faire, 55, of Tonasket, once ran a militia training center on a family farm near Monroe. Snohomish County shut it down five years ago after neighbors complained of gunfire.
Faire and Angelina Nobilis of Kent were arrested last week. He has been charged with first-degree murder and assault with a firearm and is being held in the Okanogan County Jail. She has been charged with criminal trespass.
Okanogan County Sheriff Frank Rogers says the argument and assault happened when Richard Finegold returned home after being gone for months and found that someone had moved in.
Rogers says Faire pulled a gun and got in his pickup after being confronted. Witnesses say Faire ran over two of Finegold’s friends with his pickup, twice. Debra Long, 51, of Issaquah, died and George Abrantes, of Marysville, is in serious condition at Sacred Heart Hospital in Spokane.
Faire is an administrator of the sovereign-citizen website, “A Well Regulated Militia,” according to news accounts and the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks armed hate groups.
In 2009, he was involved in a zoning fight with Snohomish County over family property he was using as a shooting range near Monroe. Eventually, the range was closed down.
During that period, however, the range came to the attention of federal agents, who described it as a “Militia Training Center” in federal court documents involving the arrest and prosecution of another self-described “sovereign citizen,” Andrew Steven Gray.
Faire had said the range enabled him to become a firearms trainer for the Appleseed Project, a nonprofit pro-gun movement that combines Revolutionary War and early American history with gun training. Among its goals is to “teach every American how to fire a bullet through a man-sized target out to 500 yards,” according to its website.
A conservative pro-gun blog called “The ReaganWing”, which claims to be “the conservative conscience of the Republican Party” in Washington, has rushed to the defense of Faire and Nobilis, claiming they were set up by law enforcement.
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