KCSO coroner confirms man shot in Inyokern was suspect, Benjamin Ashley. When they ordered him to put his hands into the air, officials say Ashley pulled a 9-millimeter handgun and fired one shot.
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“I’m confident that it’s him”, Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood told The Bakersfield Californian.
Authorities say he took the men hostage in a cabin near Twin Oaks after they confronted him about squatting on the property. During the search, officials had advised residents to stay locked inside their homes and shut down local schools, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The deputies returned fire, although it wasn’t immediately clear if Ashley died from police gunfire or his own.
Three other weapons, including a pair of.44-caliber handguns, were found on Ashley’s person and in a backpack he was carrying, the sheriff said. He is suspected of killing a retired dentist, taking three men hostage and wounding two deputies during a crime spree that began July 28.
On August 1, two SWAT team members were shot and wounded by a man while they searched the Kelso Valley for Ashley.
“We have not positively identified him, but all indications are it is the suspect we were looking for”, Pruitt said. Authorities also closed a stretch of the famed Pacific Crest Trail in the southern Sierra Nevada during the manhunt. He was charged with resisting arrest in Orange County in 2012 and in Glendale in 2013, according to court records.
This undated photo provided by the Kern County Sheriff Department…
The search for Ashley over a 100-square- mile area of high desert terrain east of Bakersfield, California involved state, county and federal officers, some in aircraft, and the public had been warned to be on guard, Youngblood said.
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The first version of this story was published at 10:02 a.m.
