The suspect of a kidnapping and torture in Oregon died on Tuesday from a self-inflicted gunshot injury, according to a police spokesman.
Grants Pass Police Department Lt. Jeff Hattersley said that the suspect, Benjamin Obadiah Foster, died at the hospital on Tuesday night. For multiple hours, police carried out a standoff with the man who is suspected of attempted murder.
Foster closed himself in beneath a house as law enforcement swarmed the area, established a command post, and brought a SWAT team together while trying to get him to turn himself in.
Before 8 p.m. on Tuesday night, Hattersley said the incident was “resolved” and law enforcement later said he had been arrested. They said he had died from his wounds thereafter.
On January 24, a woman was discovered tied up, unconscious, and almost dead in a house in Oregon. She was still in the hospital in serious condition as of Wednesday, according to the Associated Press.
Hattersley noted that officials had gotten “credible information” that the suspect had gone into the home where the woman was discovered, according to The Daily Courier.
Law enforcement enlisted the help of the public in searching for Foster and put out a picture of him, clarifying that he might have changed what he looked like since the photo was captured. Grants Pass law enforcement also put out a warning in the community and said he might still be loose on Tuesday afternoon prior to his capture.
Foster had also evaded law enforcement when they raided a location last week. Investigators don’t think that he operated on his own, but rather believe that someone helped him get away.
The suspect had a history of criminal conduct related to the way he had allegedly treated a former girlfriend.
He pleaded guilty to battery counts in 2021. In 2019, he kept his girlfriend at the time as a prisoner in her apartment for several weeks. He was sentenced to one to two-and-a-half years in prison and could have been forced to serve out nearly 200 more days in state custody after taking into account the days he had waited in jail to go to trial. However, he was let go the day he was taken to prison, according to Nevada corrections department authorities on Monday.
Last week, Grants Pass Police Chief Warren Hensman said that it is “extremely troubling” that Foster ended up being hunted in Oregon instead of staying in prison in Nevada.