36 year old Jason Valdez was approached by police officers attempting to serve him a warrant on drug related offenses. Instead of accepting the warrant, Jason grabbed himself a hostage and holed up in a Utah motel room. During the 16-hour standoff that ensued, Valdez posted status updates to his wall 6 times in an effort to keep his family and friends in the loop. At one point he even posted this picture of him and his hostage, with the caption, “Got a cute ‘hostage’, huh?”
At one point Valdez “popped off a few” when police tried to enter his room, in denial of his requests. Valdez even received some help from his friends, one of who posted on his wall that a SWAT officer was hiding in the bushes outside of the Ogden motel. “Thank you homie,” Valdex replied. “Good looking out.”
Valdez actually picked up 12 friends on Facebook during the encounter, and his wall has since been littered with a flood of messages including, “Dude, you’re an idiot.” His sister has since taken over control of his FB wall and is currently going on a tirade against all the “haters” saying that “only God can judge.”
The encounter ended when authorities forced entry to his room and Valdez shot himself in the chest. He is currently in critical condition. And so we see justice is served once again to a criminal, by his own doing. For the record, Facebook perusal is now
an entire coarse in most criminal investigation schools.
this is certainly one of the most bizarre stories to date. I love that his sister took over his FB page and instead of just deleting it, she decided to post more nonsense.
If you read the entire wall (you never could, there’s 6,000 comments on one post) it’s pretty damn absurd.
im kinda pisssed because even after the police shut down the power this guy was still able to post on facebook via his phone. I dont even have that kind of technology.
Then I would not be in the business of taking hostages if I were you.
If I ever took a hostage, I would post exclusively to howigit.com
A wise move – that’s the real reason I started this site.
Being a resident of the “great” SLC this was a bizarre story to wake up to the other day, but not necessarily surprising given the state of technology and society. After the shock value had died, the local media turned quickly to those who had suffered at the hands of the SWAT team. A family who was living (literally) in the room next door at the motel had their entire room trashed by members of the SWAT team. This included all their food stuffs, clothes, and possessions. Continuing the bizarreness of the overall story, the family returned to the room to find water bottles filled with urine, allegedly left their by the SWAT team members. I guess using and flushing the toilet would have given away their position.
Strange, but in my eyes the SWAT team can do as they please. This was a hostage situation with a shooter who was actually shooting. Your comfort in the Ogden hotel is not as important as the life of the hostage.
Don’t disagree at all. I just found it interesting how the media quickly attempted to prolong the story by finding new victims. The SWAT can do whatever they want to a room, but I would assume that the family would be finacially compensated for losses. The urine in bottles is very odd though.
Agreed on both accounts.
i heard Jimmer was leading the swat mission
He was going to apply for a job on the SWAT team earlier this year, but found out it would be a violation of the BYU honor code.
to be honest i for the first hour after i read this (and before i searched for it) i just assumed that Jason Valdez was a baseball player.
Nah he’s just a straight up G from Utah.
I actually thought he was one of the suspects in the beating of the giants fan in LA til I saw it was SLC.