Grocery Store Employee Nearly Decapitated 14 Years Ago Along Bike Path — and Police Still Don’t Have Suspect

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 gruesome.

Police believed the Ashland High School graduate was struck with a “large sharp-edged object” multiple times in his head and neck causing near decapitation as he walked home from the local Shop ‘n’ Kart where he worked.

“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 tells PEOPLE. “It just appears to have been a random thing.”

The attack along the popular biking trail near an elementary school shocked the small city of Ashland, with a population of around 21,000.

“We don’t get a lot of murders here, generally like one every seven years,” says O’Meara. “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 of the attack.

“I remember it was snowing that day,” he says. “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 after the brutal killing, Grubbs’ murder remains unsolved.

“David was not somebody to have enemies,” he 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, even when she 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.”

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Over the years, investigators have interviewed hundreds of people, but no arrests have ever been made.

“There are people that have bragged to their friends that they’ve done this,” he 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 leading to the arrest and conviction of his killer.

“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,” says O’Meara. “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.”

O’Meara is still hopeful the case will be solved one day.

“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 at tipline@ashland.or.us.