February 1, 2023 3:30 p.m.
Officials with Oregon State Police and the Josephine County Sheriff’s Office say that Benjamin Foster is responsible for a double-homicide, discovered in the Sunny Valley area Tuesday.
Foster, the 36-year old Wolf Creek man who led authorities on a week-long manhunt, after attacking a woman he had been in a relationship with, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound Tuesday night, after being transported to a Grants Pass hospital. That followed an hours-long stand-off with police.
Grants Pass Police Department officials were joined by Josephine County Sheriff Dave Daniel and Captain Kyle Kennedy of the Oregon State Police for a press conference Wednesday afternoon to announce the murders and provide more information about the stand off at a Grants Pass home.
With Foster on the loose, law enforcement officials had been conducting welfare patrols in the Sunny Valley area, northwest of Grants Pass. On Tuesday they stopped at a rural home and found that the two men who lived there were deceased due to blunt force trauma. The victims have been identified as Richard Lee Barron Junior and Donald Owen Griffith. Multiple items in the home were missing, including a dog.
Grants Pass Police had been looking for Foster around-the-clock since the January 24th assault. At the press conference, Grants Pass Police Chief Warren Hensman said the victim is still hospitalized in critical condition, with serious injuries. Hensman said Foster had slipped away from the Wolf Creek area on January 26th, as police were trying to locate him.
On Tuesday a cab company said a man had called for a ride from the Sunny Valley area back to the neighborhood near the final manhunt location in Grants Pass. This was at the same home where the attack on the woman had taken place nearly a week earlier. Hensman said a SWAT Team was immediately deployed and a search warrant was obtained. After combing the home and finding no one inside, a law enforcement robot was used to help determine that Foster was burrowed deep beneath the home. GPPD officials said the suspect refused to communicate during the standoff.
Hensman said Foster shot himself in the head with a .45 caliber gun. Though initially thought to be dead, it was determined he was still breathing, with the weapon in his hand. Hensman said the suspect was recovered by cutting floor boards in the home.
He died about an hour after arriving at the hospital.
GPPD Lieutenant Jeff Hattersley told News Radio 93-9 FM and 1240 KQEN that a complete time line of the events in the case will be released in the next couple of days.