Orlando service remembers homeless when others didn't

Orlando service remembers homeless when others didn't
Orlando Sentinel - Orlando,FL,USA
Kate Santich | Sentinel Staff Writer
December 18, 2008
They left this life without a home but not without making a mark. Among them were an accountant, a former social worker, a decorated Vietnam veteran, a man who could never cope with the tragic death of his twin brother.

Of the 24 homeless people who died in Orange, Osceola and Seminole counties during the past year, two were nameless -- authorities unable to identify their bodies. One had been hit by a car as he shuffled his meager belongings across a road in darkness. Another was murdered inside his tent in a homeless camp in the woods.

The lucky ones had a mourner or two among the half-empty pews Wednesday morning at First Presbyterian Church of Orlando. There, a memorial ceremony was held in their honor -- an event mirrored in 125 cities across the country this week to coincide with the Northern Hemisphere's longest night of the year.

One man whose name was read was known only as "Cigar Bill." As with many of the departed, the details of his life are largely lost after too many setbacks, too many losses, too many problems that piled up until most of the vestiges of civilization had fallen away.
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Killings in homeless camp stun relatives

Killings in homeless camp stun relatives
By Louis Sahagun 1:01 p.m

Relatives of one of five people found shot to death Sunday gather to pray at the crime scene. Although the site was considered a homeless campsite, authorities say not all the victims were homeless.

By Louis Sahagun
2:14 PM PST, November 3, 2008
As investigators continued today to search for clues into the fatal shootings of five people at a homeless campsite in Long Beach, relatives of one of the victims gathered at the secluded site to light candles and pray.

"It's sad, real sad," said Fauamoa Palaita, a relative of one of the victims, Vanessa Malaepule. "I feel hurt. We can't believe it."

At a news conference today, authorities released the names of Malaepule, 34, of Long Beach, and of Lorenzo Perez Villacana, 44. The names of the other victims were being withheld pending notification of next of kin. They were described as a man of Middle Eastern descent in his 40s, a white male in his 50s and a Latino female in her 20s.

Los Angels County coroner Assistant Chief Ed Winter said that autopsies would be conducted Tuesday but that it appeared that all five "died of multiple gunshot wounds."

Canada:Surprise pleas in killing of homeless man Paul Croutch

Surprise pleas in Moss Park killing

Two of three accused in attack on homeless man plead guilty to manslaughter in his death


Apr 18, 2008 04:30 AM
Rosie DiManno
Columnist

"What the hell happened last night?"

– Corp. Jeffrey Hall, the morning after a killing.

They bent their heads and wept, two ruined young men who admit beating a homeless person to death, an unresisting stranger, for no reason they can recall.

One remembers the episode through an alcoholic haze and does not disavow it, if purportedly mystified by his own brutality.

One claims to have no memory of the horrific incident at all, which provides a useful buffer against conscience.

A third – serious doubts raised about his involvement in the original, incomprehensible, staggeringly cruel assault on a recumbent street person – accepts culpability as an accessory after the fact.

They didn't mean to do murder – a common refrain from defendants – which was the charge originally levelled against the trio of army reservists in the unprovoked pounding that took the life of 59-year-old Paul Croutch in the early morning hours of Aug. 31, 2005 at Moss Park.

Following a preliminary hearing, the charges were knocked down to second-degree murder, plus assault causing bodily harm against a witness to the frenzied attack.

Yesterday – the triumvirate standing shoulder-to-shoulder – Hall and Brian Deganis pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of manslaughter, as accepted by Crown Attorney Hank Goody, Mountaz Ibrahim to the accessory charge, all three going down on assault causing bodily harm against Valerie Valen, the woman who was booted and punched for trying to intervene.

And none of it makes any more sense now than it did nearly three years ago. Croutch – a fragile human being bundled in plastic bags against the rain – is dead, apparently because he drew the white-hot, booze-fuelled wrath of bullies with malice on the brain and an absence of pity in the heart.
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http://www.thestar.com/News/Columnist/article/415790