Death at family home sad end for man whose life spiraled out of control after injury

When Rick Foreman broke into his estranged wife’s home on Saturday – an incident that ended in his death – it wasn’t the first time.

He’d broken in multiple times in the week prior, using a screwdriver on a door and shattering a window. He stole a gun, the vehicle his adult son drives and the surveillance cameras his wife installed after she filed for divorce and got a move-out order against him. He also threatened to kill her, according to court documents.

A family friend said Foreman’s last week of life does not define him, though, and he was for the most part a loving father and husband, a “kindhearted soul.” She said a head injury from a motorcycle crash many years ago led to mental illness and substance abuse.

That substance abuse led to violence the last week of his life.

“(Foreman) told me that he was going to end my life,” Foreman’s wife, Melissa, wrote in a petition for a restraining order.

The restraining order was granted Friday, the day before authorities say Rick Foreman, 53, forced his way into the home on Alexandria Court in north Modesto with a gun, went upstairs to a room in which his wife was hiding and fired multiple shots before he was subdued by a male family member.

The family member, who wasn’t identified, managed to get the gun away from Foreman, said Modesto Police Department spokeswoman Heather Graves.

Another family member brought the gun outside; it was found in a neighbor’s driveway.

While Foreman was being restrained, he lost consciousness. Seconds later, emergency personnel arrived at the home and tried to revive him, but he was ultimately pronounced dead at the scene.

In a petition for a move-out order, ultimately granted by a judge and served on Foreman a week prior, Melissa Foreman wrote that he had been using crack cocaine for much of their 27-year marriage. She said he also recently started heavily abusing alcohol.

“(Foreman’s) drug problem is now so significant I have found that he is withdrawing anywhere from $300 to $600 per day from his savings account to support his crack cocaine/alcohol addiction,” she wrote.

Melissa Foreman, through family friend Tonya Bentulan, declined to comment, but Bentulan issued a statement on behalf of the family. She said Foreman suffered a brain injury due to a motorcyclist accident 15 years ago and had suffered from mental illness ever since.

“Like many others with mental health issues, there were periods in which he chose to self-medicate and in turn, went off the deep end,” Bentulan’s statement reads. “There was a lot of hurt, anger and pain. Loving Rick wasn’t always easy, but he never left our hearts. There was so much more good about him than bad. No one ever stopped loving him, not even during his final moments.”

Court documents said the family held several interventions for Foreman over the years and he had been in and out of drug treatment facilities and Alcoholics Anonymous programs, to no avail. Rick Foreman had a 2012 DUI conviction and several other arrests for possessing narcotics.

“It is now clear he cannot control his impulses and I will no longer subject myself or our family to him and his drug-filled lifestyle choices,” Melissa Foreman wrote in the petition, which gave her control of two of their properties and left him with a third.

Rick Foreman had been living in the garage at the Alexandria Court home, using it as a “drug den” from which he would come and go at all hours of the day and night, according to the court document. He left drug paraphernalia around the garage and made messes inside of the home, which his wife and their 21-year-old son, who also lives there, had to clean.

“We are no longer comfortable in the home with (Rick Foreman) residing there, yet he is refusing to move into one of our other properties,” the petition reads.

Rick Foreman was served the order at the Alexandria Way home on the morning of Jan. 29. That evening, he returned to the home and broke a back window, according to court documents. He took a Jeep their son drives.

The incident was caught on surveillance cameras Melissa Foreman recently installed. Graves confirmed officers responded to the home on that date and Rick Foreman was wanted on a charge of vandalism in connection with the incident.

He broke into the home several more times in the days that followed during which he took a handgun and ammunition from a dresser, rifled through his wife’s belongings, and smoked drugs in the garage, according to court documents. On Jan. 31 he threatened to kill his wife.

“I do not feel safe in my home … and have been staying in other locations, hiding my car so (Foreman) cannot locate me. I am terrified for my safety and that of our son,” Melissa Foreman wrote in the petition filed by her attorney, Michael Kalanta.

She was granted the restraining order on Friday but it did not stop Foreman from returning the next day.

“Even at his (worst), Rick was never anything like the man that died on that horrible day,” Bentulan’s statement reads. “Simply put, Rick’s mind had finally failed him. It had experienced more illness and damage than any brain is designed to endure. It may have been Rick’s body that carried him through that door, but aside from that, he bared no resemblance to the Rick that we know.”

Bentulan described him as a hands-on father of three adult children, “a provider, a doting husband, great friend and neighbor, and an all around goofy guy.”

The case of Foreman’s death remains under investigation by the Modesto Police Department and will ultimately be forwarded to the Stanislaus County District Attorney’s Office for review, Graves said. A cause of death had not been determined pending the completion of the investigation.

This story was originally published February 9, 2017 at 4:43 PM with the headline "Death at family home sad end for man whose life spiraled out of control after injury."