'Bum hunting,' a dangerous part of life on the streets
By SUE CARLTON
Published January 20, 2006
At a downtown park between the Tampa art museum and the library, homeless men stand around blowing the morning chill off their hands, talking.
I am standing there too, asking if they'd heard about what happened to those homeless men down south. Some of them nod yes. They read it in newspapers at the library or left behind at bus stops, or they caught part of that violent surveillance video on the TV over at the labor pool.
In Fort Lauderdale, three teenagers are suspected of attacking homeless men with bats and sticks, "almost like it was fun and games for them," a police officer said.
Norris Gaynor, 45, was sleeping on a park bench when he was beaten to death.
The men at the park say, yes, it was bad, it was extreme. But they do not seem surprised. Violence is a fact of life out here, the possibility of getting hurt as regular as rainstorms that soak their stashes of carefully hoarded blankets. Everyone has a story of rocks thrown at them for fun, of friends beaten with sticks, of narrow escapes.
"Happens," says a man named Willie Jay.
The National Coalition for the Homeless reports "nonlethal attacks" against homeless people are on the rise. In 2004, 25 homeless people died because of violent acts or hate crimes.
"You don't rest good when you're out there at night," says Ernest Jordan, who comes to the park to sit by the Hillsborough River. "Even the leaves from the trees wake you up."
Over his shoulder, I can see the balcony of the museum where a man named Isaiah Walker lay down his bedroll on the last night of his life nearly 20 years ago.
I call Mike Benito, the prosecutor then. He had seen the video on TV and it made him think of what happened to Isaiah Walker.
"The more things change," he says, "the more things remain the same."
Two teenage brothers, both skinheads and one of them in steel-toed boots, found Walker that night five days before Christmas 1987. Walker, who earned a Purple Heart in Vietnam, was punched and kicked and finally stabbed to death.
Dean McKee was 16; his brother Scott, 18. In court, a Times reporter wrote, Dean looked like a summer intern at a bank. He cried as Scott testified against him.
Walker's sister sat through the trial. She said then she wanted people to know her brother "wasn't just a black transient." He had a family who cared about him.
Scott pleaded no contest to attempted murder and was sentenced to five years in prison. He was out in less than one. State records show he was later charged with a lewd and lascivious act, convicted and labeled a sex offender. Records say he lives in Massachusetts.
Dean was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. He can ask for parole in five years. Two decades later in Fort Lauderdale, police say, a group of teens armed with baseball bats, a golf club and a paintball gun went hunting for the homeless. "Bum hunting," is the term mentioned on the homeless coalition's Web site. Blood sport is what it is.
Jacques Pierre, 58, had been sleeping on a bench at Florida Atlantic University. The video shows him being beaten by two men. Men? The main attacker looks like a lanky kid in baggy shorts and a T-shirt as he swings his bat again and again. As he runs away, Pierre raises his head to look after him, then collapses.
The men in the park by the river tell me about their strategies. They stay leery of teenagers at night, especially in summer when school is out and kids are more likely to roam. They avoid parks close to the street, where people can sling eggs and bottles from passing cars without even stopping. At night, they bed down in groups, or at least in twos.
"We just try to stay out of everybody's way," Jordan says.
Times researcher Cathy Wos contributed to this report. Sue Carlton can be reached at carlton@sptimes.com