Desperation Drove Vietnam Veteran to Seek Arrest

Vet who asked to be arrested gets help finding home 
Cincinnati.com
DeMio
March 29, 2015

"Nobody wanted me," McKenney explained simply. "I'd been to the hospitals. Everything. The only thing I had left was to have them arrest me."

Michelle McKenney, of Hebron, helps her father, Eugene McKenney, to a chair in his room at Atria Highland Crossing, Fort Wright. McKenney, 63, a Vietnam War veteran who was homeless and went to the Elsmere Police Department and asked to be arrested for vagrancy so he could get shelter. Several social service agencies and family members have worked to get him help and shelter. (Photo: The Enquirer/Patrick Reddy)

ELSMERE – The rail-thin man wore a cap that stood out to Elsmere Police Sgt. Todd Cummins. This was a Vietnam veteran.

The man had slowly pushed himself with a walker to the door of the Elsmere Police Department on March 12 and quietly demanded to be arrested, but Cummins wasn't about to do that.

The man had done nothing wrong. He just had no place else to turn.

The officer sought help from nearby homeless ministries for Eugene McKenney, starting a turn of events in the veteran's life that would lead to a future potentially more promising than he'd had since before he went to Vietnam in 1970. "I was a door gunner,"

McKenney offered last week, sitting with his daughter, Michelle McKenney of Hebron, and two advocates from Northern Kentucky homeless ministries who've been helping him. McKenney speaks little these days. He suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, Parkinson's disease and has had multiple strokes. He sat back Wednesday as his daughter relayed one of his most vivid memories of Vietnam.
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