Cliven Bundy son arrested, released in southern Utah
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - An adult son of southern Nevada rancher and states' rights advocate Cliven Bundy said Wednesday he spent a night in a southern Utah county jail after sheriff's deputies accused him of resisting arrest when he appeared in a justice court for an unrelated code violation summons.
Ryan Bundy, 42, said a judge in Cedar City freed him without bail and set a court date in March on the misdemeanor resisting charge and a misdemeanor case of interfering with an animal control officer that Bundy said he thinks stemmed from 2013.
"Interfering with what? I didn't understand it," Bundy said. He said he pleaded not guilty to both charges.
Bundy was booked into jail Tuesday after scuffling with deputies and telling them he wouldn't be arrested, Iron County sheriff Sgt. Nik Johnson said.
Bundy, a rancher and former construction firm owner, said the summons was for a code violation relating to a vehicle parked on property he owns in Iron County. He said he now lives in Bunkerville, Nevada.
The Salt Lake Tribune reported that the interfering with an animal control officer case stems from allegations that Bundy improperly removed a horse that had been impounded after being found loose near Cedar City Regional Airport.
Bundy's family home and melon farm is in Bunkerville, about 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas.
That was the scene of a tense standoff last April between well-armed backers of the ranching family patriarch and federal agents trying to round up Bundy cattle from public land in a grazing fee dispute.
Federal Bureau of Land Management agents withdrew, and Cliven Bundy became a symbol for resisting authority.
Another Bundy son, Cliven Lance Bundy, 34, is jailed in Las Vegas and faces two to eight years in Nevada state prison at a Clark County District Court hearing Feb. 4 after having been dropped from a court diversion program for violating probation.
Lance Bundy pleaded guilty February 2013 to felony burglary and weapon theft charges but had remained out of prison while he was enrolled in the drug user counseling and diversion program.