Dominique J. Ware told a jail nurse he had swallowed a bag of fentanyl and was dying. The nurse recorded his vital signs, suspected he was faking, and roughly 50 minutes passed before jail staff got him emergency treatment — a delay newly detailed in records from his February 2025 death at the Multnomah County Detention Center. The 35-year-old Portland man died several days later at OHSU, and prosecutors have now closed the door on criminal charges against the staff involved.
According to The Oregonian/OregonLive, Ware was arrested by U.S. Marshals in Portland on February 12, 2025, the day before he died. Court records reviewed by the outlet do not say why he was arrested, and county officials continue to refuse to provide a reason. Ware had prior convictions, including second-degree assault with sexual motivation and possession with intent to deliver in 2008, when he was 18, and unlawful use of a firearm in Washington in 2017. He was remembered as a Portland-born warehouse worker and a hip-hop and R&B musician.
A Swallowed Bag and a Skeptical Response
Records show Ware had swallowed a red plastic bag containing an eighth of an ounce of cocaine and amphetamines. A jail nurse measured his oxygen saturation at 98%, his pulse at 103 beats per minute, and his heart rate at 118 beats per minute, but did not take his blood pressure at one point because of possible safety concerns; the nurse later recorded his blood pressure as 139 over 78. The nurse observed Ware lying on his side with jerking body motion and possible seizure-like activity, along with small amounts of blood in his mouth, but believed he was faking a medical emergency, per the outlet’s report.
That skepticism reflects a broader pattern in Portland-area jails, where suspects frequently use what officers call “dope swallowing” — falsely claiming to have ingested dangerous narcotics — to avoid or delay booking, according to KGW. The false claims force officers into hours of hospital watch duty and strain emergency room resources, which has bred deep skepticism among jail nurses and deputies toward ingestion claims. Multnomah County prosecutors, police, and health officials had actually built a dedicated hospital monitoring protocol and a “Narcotic Ingestion Admonishment” form back in 2018 to manage exactly this kind of situation, but that initiative lapsed during the pandemic and was never revived, KGW reported.
Deputies Move Ware, Then Find Him Not Breathing
Ware told his cellmate to get deputies’ attention as his condition worsened inside the detention center. Roughly 12 jail deputies roughly handled him before placing him in a wheelchair, and jail staff transferred him to a disciplinary unit rather than treating the episode as a medical emergency. Jail staff also administratively charged Ware with abuse of the medical process, failure to do as ordered, staff assault, and destruction of county property, according to the report…