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Posted on 03/20/2025 3:26:51 PM PDT by nickcarraway
By the time his family arrived at OHSU’s intensive-care unit on Feb. 13, Dominique Ware was unresponsive. The 35-year-old was suffering from organ failure, and he would die the following evening, two days after being rushed to the hospital from downtown Portland’s jail.
No one could tell Ware’s parents and siblings what had happened.
A month later, the family remains in the dark – not just about his shocking death but also about his arrest the day before he died.
U.S. Marshals took Ware into custody on Wednesday, Feb. 12, and he landed at the Multnomah County Detention Center. But the following day, while he was still in custody, he suffered a medical emergency from what doctors told the family was likely a fentanyl overdose. He died the next day.
Multnomah County Sheriff’s officials said a court ordered Ware’s release the same day he collapsed, but they didn’t say whether the order came before or after he was rushed to the hospital.
Ware’s siblings and other family members told The Oregonian/OregonLive they weren’t aware of Ware ever using fentanyl, a cheap, highly dangerous synthetic opioid, or any other drugs.
“They were saying it was fentanyl, but he didn’t do fentanyl at all,” his brother, Charles Ware, said. “We don’t understand how that was in his system, and they just really didn’t provide any type of clues.”
A spokesperson for the Multnomah County Medical Examiner said that Ware’s death is still under investigation.
Ware is the second person to die this year from a medical emergency while in custody at the Multnomah County Detention Center. Coming out of the pandemic, deaths of people in custody in the county spiked, with seven in 2023 alone.
The jail deaths were caused by drug overdoses, preexisting medical conditions or suicide.
Last month, two Multnomah County Sheriff’s deputies who tried to cover up their failure to make mandatory jail rounds pleaded no contest to official misconduct. In both of their cases, an inmate under their watch died.
Ware was a warehouse worker, as well as a hip-hop and R&B musician, his family said. He was living in Portland, where he was born, at the time of his arrest.
His sister, Floyda Criglar, said he was a caring sibling to her and their three brothers, adding that he had a big personality.
“You always have that one person in the group who is full of life and they just migrate toward people,” Criglar said of her brother. “He was that person.”
His unexpected death has left his family with questions about how and why it happened. So far, those questions have stubbornly remained unanswered.
“They just tell us that they’re not sure how any of that happened,” Criglar said. “I don’t know anything about why he was (in jail), or how it ended up this way.”
The circumstances even of Ware’s arrest are murky. Criglar, Charles Ware and Charles’ wife Stephanie Yates said no one has told them why Dominique Ware ended up at the county jail in downtown Portland.
Jail booking records don’t list any charges, which is not unusual when a local jail is temporarily holding someone for the U.S. Marshals.
Ware did have a years-old criminal record. Court documents show that he was convicted of second-degree assault with sexual motivation and possession with intent to deliver in 2008, when he was 18 years old. He was released from prison a few years later.
In 2017, he was convicted of unlawful use of a firearm in Washington.
“I don’t know that version of my brother,” Criglar said when asked about Ware’s past convictions.
A search of court-record databases in Oregon and Washington didn’t bring up any active cases against Ware at the time of his February arrest, and federal court filings also don’t show any recent criminal cases against him.
The judge’s order to release him is not available in online court databases or at the Multnomah County Courthouse, and so it’s not clear even which judge issued the order.
A spokesperson for the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office said Ware was a federal prisoner and referred The Oregonian/OregonLive to the U.S. Marshals for more information. The U.S. Marshals said Ware was arrested on a felony warrant out of Washington state and directed the news organization back to the sheriff’s office.
Criglar and Charles Ware said detectives have not told the family why Ware was arrested.
They’re frustrated at their inability to learn anything about their brother’s arrest and death, and they don’t know where to turn.
“We’re really kind of in the dark on this one, and we really want justice and want to know what happened,” Charles Ware said. “It doesn’t add up.”
Tatum Todd is a breaking news reporter who covers public safety, crime and community news. Reach them at ttodd@oregonian.com or 503-221-4313.
He probably wanted to buy a Tesla Model 3.
It is my understanding that many people die of fentanyl poisoning who don't knowingly take fentanyl. It is secretly mixed into other drugs. Many, many such cases.
Why did the US Marshalls arrest him? Did the “journalist even contact them to ask?
Sounds like the Multnomah County Jail has a fentanyl problem.
Drugs are legal in that city.
I signed a big business deal a year of two before the lockdowns. The other company president celebrated by going to Vegas and bought some cocaine. It was laced with fentanyl and he died that night.
Not in the jail, they’re not. And not fentanyl.
The journalists and the family aren’t trying very hard to find out what the charges were. If a judge ordered him released, then there is a court record, but nobody has checked it?
Not any more....
Or swallowed to avoid to avoid possession.
If you would like more information about what’s happening in Oregon, please FReepmail me. Please send me your name by FReepmail if you want to be on this list.
Yes, like the young guy in Super Troopers who had to quickly eat all the marijuana carried in a bag on the car seat so he and his two buddies wouldn’t be caught by the approaching officers at the side of the road.
Then the two pals demanded he give them a share of the dope cost since he benefited from eating it (and getting sick).
I would say he was a drug mule. But that is only a guess based on the information in the article which may or may not be true.
“They were saying it was fentanyl, but he didn’t do fentanyl at all,” his brother, Charles Ware, said. “We don’t understand how that was in his system, and they just really didn’t provide any type of clues.”I'll give one guess brother Charles.
Hint: drugs have been laced for untold decades.
Very strange.
The Portland US Federal Court House has an entire row of holding cells, and it is located just a few blocks from the County Detention Center.
Why would federal officers arrest someone, then hand that person off to the County?
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