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Adam
F L I N T O I D
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Frozen in indifference: Life goes on around body found in vacant warehouse
"There are at least 19,000 homeless people in Detroit, by some estimates. Put another way, more than 1 in 50 people here are homeless.
The human problem is so bad, and the beds so few, that some shelters in the city provide only a chair. The chair is yours as long as you sit in it. Once you leave, the chair is reassigned.
Thousands of down-on-their-luck adults do nothing more with their day than clutch onto a chair. This passes for normal in some quarters of the city.
"I hate that musical chair game," Ruben said. He said he'd rather live next to a corpse.
Convinced that it was indeed a body, this reporter made a discreet call to a police officer.
"Aw, just give 911 a call," the cop said. "We'll be called eventually."
A call was placed to 911. A woman answered. She was told it was a reporter calling. The operator tried to follow, but seemed confused. "Where is this building?"
She promised to contact the appropriate authorities.
Twenty minutes or so went by when 911 called the newsroom. This time it was a man.
"Where's this building?"
It was explained to him, as was the elevator shaft and the tomb of ice.
"Bring a jack-hammer," this reporter suggested.
"That's what we do," he said.
Nearly 24 hours went by. The elevator shaft was still a gaping wound. There was no crime scene tape. The homeless continued to burn their fires. City schoolchildren still do not have the necessary books to learn. The train station continues to crumble. Too many homicides still go unsolved.
After another two calls to 911 on Wednesday afternoon (one of which was disconnected), the Detroit Fire Department called and agreed to meet nearby.
Capt. Emma McDonald was on the scene.
"Every time I think I've seen it all, I see this," she said.
And with that they went about the work of recovering a person who might otherwise be waiting for the warm winds of spring." |
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Sat Jan 31, 2009 4:05 pm |
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Adam
F L I N T O I D
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Sat Jan 31, 2009 4:14 pm |
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ManinthePinStripeSuit
F L I N T O I D
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How many homeless does Davison have? Opps most of the
homeless is in the inner-city of Flint. Adam, thanks for reading
what the news paper stated about the here in Detroit, but did
you jump into the discussion when I mentioned the 93 year old
man that frozen to death in Bay City?
The man in Bay City did have a home to stayed warm in if the
Light company had not cut his heating electric off, and the man
here in Detroit had no where to go to get warm. Just in case that
the news media did not publish this fact, but there is 22 other
homeless men living in the old Michigan Central depot, and many
of them do eat in one of the area soup kitchens.
Whenever outsiders try to talk about something they read in a
newspaper about what happening in Detroit it makes me want
to laugh, and it allow me to see that we are in the need for help
here in America but we are helping the middle east.
Adam, a few of the area Community organizations will be hosting
a fund raiser to get money to bury the man Monday evening. Do
you think that the event is worth your time to attend since you are
concerned about the homeless here in Detroit? |
_________________
WilliamX
MIB Doom Squad |
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Sat Jan 31, 2009 6:14 pm |
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Ryan Eashoo
F L I N T O I D
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Stuff like this makes me sick! My heart goes out to the person who is dead in the elevator shaft. The picture indeed is worth 10,000 or more words, none of them good. How can people just not care about human life? Instead of spending so much money blowing stuff up and then rebuilding it *( iraq and other countries ) why not rebuild Detroit?
quote:
Adam schreef:
I wonder how many homeless could fit in the
$592 billion 9,500 U.S. Embassy
in Iraq.
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Flint Michigan Resident, Tax Payer, Flint Nutt - Local REALTOR - Activist. www.FlintTown.com |
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Sat Jan 31, 2009 7:17 pm |
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ManinthePinStripeSuit
F L I N T O I D
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Ryan, It makes me sick also. Do you call that the former
governor John Angler closed all the Mental Instutions here
in Michigan, and these people are patients from them same
instutions that was closed. Most do not have no Family to
care for them, but many have Families who do not want to
be bothered with them, and most homeless (especially men)
will sleep where ever they can.
Here in Detroit Ryan, shelters and treatment centers are full
with people who claim to have a addiction just to get out the
cold, but when its warm they can make it in the streets, and
again look at the people who are not homeless they don't
care.
Whenever there is a big event taking place Downtown Detroit
the homeless is carried off to jail. In closing, there is no able
body to be homeless. This is not just happening here in Detroit,
but its happening in Flint, Saginaw, Bay City, Grand Rapids, and
do you think that the problem will ever be solved? |
_________________
WilliamX
MIB Doom Squad |
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Sat Jan 31, 2009 8:14 pm |
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Adam
F L I N T O I D
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To family, frozen man was Johnnie
The man frozen at the bottom of an abandoned elevator shaft was indeed somebody's child.
For the record, her name was Orlene.
For the record, his name was Johnnie. Johnnie Redding.
Redding met his Maker about a month ago, authorities surmise, when he was either pushed or fell down the shaft and came to rest in five feet of water. The weather turned blue, and Redding would become encased in a vault of ice, his shoes and shins protruding out.
The world became shocked to learn that people knew that Redding lay below and yet carried on with their own games and grievances, not bothering to inform the authorities. Eventually, someone with a heart called this reporter. Once located, two dozen police officers and firefighters working with chainsaws and guide rope extricated the body.
A wallet was found on the corpse. The identification told investigators the barest of facts. Name: Johnnie Redding. DOB: 09-29-1952. City of residence: River Rouge.
They know little else. Whether his was death by misadventure or by the hand of another man remains a mystery.
"He is still too frozen to even take fingerprints," said Vanessa Dehna- Garmo, spokeswoman for the Wayne County medical examiner.
The address in the wallet leads back to the small Cape Cod in River Rouge, once owned by his mother and now owned by his brother Homer, who along with his sister, Lillian Warren, identified the body this evening.
Homer Redding, 59, was saddened but not surprised by his little brother's death. According to him, Johnnie was a soft-hearted man who fell into a hard world and could never extricate himself from it, no matter how hard he tried. Johnnie was infected with the need for drugs and alcohol. Rundown buildings were his clubhouse.
"He chose the life for whatever reason," Redding said. "But he wasn't homeless. Please don't call him homeless. He always had a place to go. He was loved."
Johnnie Redding, according to his brother and sister, was one of those men who bounced from odd-job to couch to the homeless mission and back. He lived with his mother in River Rouge, the same house he was raised in until she died two years ago.
It wasn't always this way for Johnnie. He worked until he was 40 at a local steel mill along side of his father. Then Johnnie's brother Marion died of an overdose.
"That's when I seen the change," Homer said. "He was very close to Marion."
Johnnie began to ping-pong in life. He would do odd jobs: gardening, plumbing, anything to get him through. When he couldn't get through, he would insinuate himself on his sister's couch and then insinuated himself on his brother's couch and then feeling better, he would get lost again.
"Last time I saw him was in September for his birthday," Homer said. "It was alright. I haven't seen him since."
If the outpouring of phone calls and letters are any indication, then the life and sad end of Johnnie Redding reminds us that even the dirtiest life has value. There are many Johnnies out there: Victor, Kenneth, Terrence your loved ones are asking about you.
And if you should judge Johnnie Redding harshly, his brother Homer said, remember that no man deserves to go ignored at the bottom of an elevator shaft.
"We've got to live in the world together," Homer said. "And we got to care about each other." |
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Sun Feb 01, 2009 12:07 am |
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ManinthePinStripeSuit
F L I N T O I D
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So Now you are a homeless research Specialist Adam?
Are you going to wire the Family some money from Davison
to help pay for the funeral since you know all of this?
How many homeless in Flint have you helped? So you have
went from Politics to news reporting? What was his skin color
Adam? You left that detail out.
That's amazing how being a homeless individual will teach
a person how to survive in the streets, but one would never
know where death is, and people talk about the crisis after
the incident happens.
There is also people who pretend to be homeless in order
to get money for drugs & alcohol, and them kind are the
ones who makes it hard to tell the real needy. In closing,
if the man was not homeless I would like to know why did
he freeze to death in a empty building? |
_________________
WilliamX
MIB Doom Squad |
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Sun Feb 01, 2009 2:08 am |
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