Sleeping in alley no way for a soldier to end up

Sleeping in alley no way for a soldier to end up
By Jeff Ward For The Courier-News October 2, 2011
If you haven’t already, ya gotta start reading Dave Gathman’s regular Courier-News reports. His latest on the senseless murder of homeless Elgin veteran Richard Gibbons is the kind of writing that really gets you thinking.

On the evening of Aug. 10, Gibbons, who’d most likely been drinking, was sleeping it off in the alley between the Fulton Street parking garage and the former Prairie Rock restaurant. Shelters won’t take you if you reek of alcohol.

At about 1:40 a.m., a group of men, also suspected of being inebriated, started partying on the upper deck of the parking garage, making it difficult for Gibbons to sleep. After words were exchanged, 23 year-old Chicago resident Yancarlo Garcia allegedly grabbed a 2-foot-long fire extinguisher and dropped it on the defenseless man lying 40 feet below. The blow ruptured multiple organs and broke Gibbons’ pelvis.

The injured man dialed 911 using a government-provided cellphone, but despite the best efforts of Provena Saint Joseph and Lutheran General hospitals, Gibbons died of those injuries on Sept. 4. Garcia, now charged with first-degree murder, sits in jail cell on $1 million bail.

It certainly makes you want to give up drinking, doesn’t it?

But Richard Gibbons wasn’t always homeless. By the accounts of his former common-law wife and his children, he was a talented carpenter, a charismatic man and, even though he was homeless, he worked with the Elgin Salvation Army to prevent other people from suffering a similar fate.

It was after he was drafted into the Army during the final stage of the Vietnam War that his drinking became a problem. Though she was hesitant to blame the alcoholism on the Army, Gibbons’ daughter Melissa told Gathman, “But the service really messed him up. He wouldn’t talk about it much, but the service was a time in his life that he just wanted to forget.”
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