On August 29, 2014, 26-year-old Jayson Matthew Withers died from a gunshot wound inside the Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution in Pendleton. Around 9:00 a.m. in the westside recreation yard, Withers and another inmate, Cameron Hayes, were observed in a violent assault on a third prisoner. A corrections officer in a guard tower issued commands to stop; when Withers and Hayes did not disengage, the officer fired one shot to prevent what was deemed imminent serious bodily injury to the assaulted inmate. The bullet struck Withers, who was taken to a local hospital and pronounced dead at 9:21 a.m. The inmate who had been attacked was also hospitalized, and the prison was placed on lockdown for four days after the incident.

At the time of his death Withers was serving an eight-and-a-half-year sentence that began May 13, 2010, for negligent homicide, robbery, and identity theft out of Marion County; his earliest possible release date had been November 25, 2018. Family members reported that while incarcerated he had become involved with a white supremacist gang. Cameron Hayes was placed in disciplinary segregation and the shooting was investigated with the possibility of presentation to a grand jury.