New tips in the nearly year-old investigation into the brutal murder of David Michael Grubbs have led Ashland police to file several search warrants, one at an apartment located in Southern Oregon University’s student family housing complex.
About five or six officers were on scene at 72 Wightman St., the apartment in family housing. Two other warrants were also served yesterday, one at 225 Rapp Road in Talent, a property owned by Leonard and Sally Parrish, and another on a 2006 Jeep Wagon vehicle seized by police as evidence from the Wightman Street property. The Jeep has since been released back to its owner.
“We want to respect [the residents’] privacy,” said Ashland police chief Terry Holderness. “Just because we have filed search warrants on a person’s property does not mean we are necessarily suspecting the residents themselves in any crime.
“It may just mean that someone was on their property or that their property is somehow connected. We don’t want to inconvenience any further those people who have otherwise been very cooperative.”
According to news sources divers have spent hours combing the Parrish pond and search and rescue officers scoured the property with dogs and metal detectors.
No further comment was made on the results of the search or on the nature of the tip that led police to file the warrants.
SOU’s Campus Public Safety is currently unable to release information on the SOU student inhabiting the Wightman Street property.
Grubbs’ body was discovered on the bike path near Hunter Park by passerby on the afternoon of Nov. 19, 2011. Police believe he was murdered with a long blade-like object, although they have not yet found the murder weapon. The case has remained unsolved ever since.
