David Grubbs was a 23-year-old grocery store employee when he was found dead on a bike path in southern Oregon just after 5:30 p.m. on Nov. 19, 2011.
His death was particularly brutal.
Investigators believe the Ashland High School graduate was attacked with a “large sharp-edged object” and struck multiple times in the head and neck, causing near decapitation as he walked home from his job at the local Shop ‘n’ Kart.
“We know that it wasn’t a robbery because his wallet and the beer that he bought when he got off work were still there,” Ashland Police Chief Tighe O’Meara says. “It just appears to have been a random thing.”
The attack, which happened along a popular biking trail near an elementary school, stunned the small city of Ashland, home to around 21,000 people.
“We don’t get a lot of murders here, generally like one every seven years,” O’Meara explains. “And for this guy who was truly, as far as we know, just walking home from work in the dark on a commonly used bike path and somebody attacks him and basically cuts off his head, what precipitated that? Well, we don’t know. And this being seemingly truly random makes it that much more scary for everybody, which is completely understandable.”
O’Meara was the patrol supervisor on duty the night Grubbs was killed.
“I remember it was snowing that day,” he recalls. “By the time we got out there, it was pitch black. Somebody could have operated in almost complete darkness. And it could be that David didn’t have any warning at all that somebody was coming up behind him.”
Now, 14 years later, Grubbs’ murder remains unsolved.
“David was not somebody to have enemies,” O’Meara says. “He was friendly and affable, and everybody enjoyed working with him at the grocery store. He was universally liked. And that’s one of the problems with this case. It doesn’t lend itself to giving us investigative threads to pull on. And even when the detective in charge at the time… took it to the behavioral analysis unit of the FBI, and they looked at it at the time, they said, ‘We don’t really have anything for you.’ This is such an anomaly of a murder investigation.”
Over the years, investigators have interviewed hundreds of people, but no arrests have been made.
“There are people that have bragged to their friends that they’ve done this,” O’Meara says. “I remember investigating some people that were overheard at a party bragging that they did it, but it turns out they take credit for every murder that happens in Jackson County because they think it makes them look tough or something.”
Authorities have offered a $21,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person responsible.
“I never refer to it as a cold case or a closed case, because I want everybody to understand that to the actual police department, it remains open and active as much as the circumstances allow the detectives to work on it,” O’Meara says. “And I have been very deliberate with his family and anybody else that asks that it’s not cold or closed, it’s open and active and very important to everybody here.”
He still believes the case can be solved.
“I very much want to believe that,” he says. “Somebody out there knows something and carrying that burden around for now 14 years must be really, really tiring. And, if you’re that person that knows something that can help us bring some healing to the community and the family then you know, you can anonymously give us that information, get it off your shoulders.”
Anyone with information about the murder is asked to contact the Ashland Police Department at (541) 488-2211 or email tipline@ashland.or.us.
