A record 52 people died without fixed abode in OC in March, 2023. Their names are:
Ralph MILTON who died on March 1st in Anaheim
Jon BENGFORT who died on March 1st in Santa Ana
Roger STADLMAN who died on March 2nd in Fountain Valley
Oscar NAVARRO JR. who died on March 2nd in Fullerton
Christina VARGAS who died on March 2nd in Newport Beach
Matthew DYKE who died on March 2nd in Seal Beach
Douglas SMITH who died on March 3rd in Anaheim
Wesley GOODNIGHT who died on March 3rd in Newport Beach
Arturo LARES MACIAS who died on March 3rd in Orange
Zachary DEWITT who died on March 4th in Foothill Ranch
Debra KRONNICK who died on March 4th in Lake Forest
Wendi ANDERSON who died on March 4th in Dana Point
Carl KRANTZ who died on March 4th in Orange
Wilfrido VILLANUEVA PEREZ who died on March 5th in Anaheim
John PAJARILLO GALLO who died on March 5th in Tustin
Angel GONZALEZ RODRIGUEZ who died on March 6th in Costa Mesa
William SCHOONMAKER who died on March 8th in Mission Viejo
Lance MCELWEE who died on March 8th in Anaheim
Binh LUU who died on March 8th in Santa Ana
Charles ODOM who died on March 8th in Santa Ana
Felipe ARIAS who died on March 8th in Santa Ana
Anthony SMITH who died on March 9th in Huntington Beach
Johnathan YAMAMOTO who died on March 9th in Orange
Ali ESKANDAR who died on March 10th in Costa Mesa
Eve BARTLET who died on March 10th in Laguna Beach
Peter DUAL who died on March 11th in Santa Ana
Ronald JIRSCHEFSKE who died on March 11th in Fullerton
Daniel WAREH who died on March 12th in Cypress
Evodio REYESGONZALEZ who died on March 13th in Santa Ana
Ronald BROTHERS who died on March 15th in Orange
Manuel FIGUEROA who died on March 16th in Tustin
Romeo SALAZAR who died on March 17th in Newport Beach
Loren STASSART, JR. who died on March 17th in Fullerton
Derek FENCULET who died on March 17th in Santa Ana
Karli KUHNS who died on March 18th in Costa Mesa
Salvador NAVARRO who died on March 20th in Placentia
Gregory BENNETT who died on March 21st in Fullerton
Rafael VARGAS-APOLONIO who died on March 22nd in Santa Ana
Donnell SMITH who died on March 22nd in Santa Ana
William LOPEZ who died on March 23rd in Santa Ana
Nicholas CODY who died on March 24th in Santa Ana
Matthew COOPER who died on March 25th in Garden Grove
Rochelle ARIAS who died on March 27th in Laguna Niguel
Daniel ALVARADO GUERRERO who died on March 27th in Fullerton
Kerollos GEORGY who died on March 28th in Santa Ana
Joseph TITO who died on March 28th in Huntington Beach
Sami SIDDIQUI who died on March 29th in Santa Ana
Rubi ROMERO who died on March 29th in Orange
John TORRILLO who died on March 29th in Santa Ana
Glenn SARPY who died on March 30th in Anaheim
Moira COLLINS who died on March 31st in Orange
Benjamin GARCIA who died on March 31st in Santa Ana
Additionally, five others died “without fixed abode” in OC in February, 2023 but their names were only added to the OC Coroner’s list in March. Their names are:
Donny SHELTON who died on February 13th in Anaheim
Kem PHAN who died on February 23rd in Santa Ana
Eric LAVIS who died on February 25th in Mission Viejo
Kurt STAIGER who died on February 27th in Orange
Ahmad MUSHFIQ who died on February 29th in Lake Forest
For the year, 149 people “without fixed abode” have already died since the first of the year. This is a 21% increase over last year then a record year when 123 had died during the same period of time. In 2019 only 52 people “without fixed abode” had died over the course of the first three months of the year. So the County’s homeless death rate has nearly tripled since 2019.
In fairness, this winter has been the wettest in decades. The opening of a few Emergency Cold Weather Shelters, including one that was opened here in Fullerton, almost certainly saved lives. The one in Fullerton operated consistently at over capacity: intended to shelter 90 people, it consistently sheltered 110-120 people each night.
The County also made a concerted effort to make the Narcan, an antidote to fentanyl overdosing, available to the unhoused community. One hopes that this will come to significantly reduce death rate among the unhoused in the coming months.
Still as noted last month, a surprising result of the County’s report on the 395 people who had died without fixed abode in 2021, was that 309 (78% of those who died) had been incarcerated previously in Orange County. Of the 309 who had been previously incarcerated and had subsequently died without fixed abode in OC in 2021, 262 (61.2% of the death total) had been incarcerated for less than a month, 168 (42.5% of the death total) had been incarcerated for less than a week and 75 (19.0% of the death total) had been incarcerated for less than a day (!).
How would that be possible?
Well a review of the procedures in first arresting and then releasing a person who is homeless would be in order, especially since it’s becoming clearer that these are matters of life and death.
Let us begin by recognizing that arresting someone who finds him or herself homeless means separating that person from one’s possessions. Indeed, one of the functions of a home is that this is where one normally keeps one’s stuff. A person who finds him or herself homeless however, is forced to carry most of his/her remaining possessions with him/her.
At minimum, the importance of securing and storing that person’s remaining possessions during that person’s detention should now be clear.
Further it should be clear just how important it would be to simply and expeditiously reunite that person with one’s remaining possessions following release.
Otherwise one would be throwing a person already homeless back onto the streets with nothing.
Here it should be noted that it is a practice in this County of releasing people from its jails in the dead of night.
At minimum, this practice must come to an end. It is gratuitously cruel in any case, but becomes self-evidently a life and death matter for someone being released from jail / prison (back) into homelessness, miles from one’s friends, and without any of one’s possessions except (perhaps) one’s clothes on one’s back. And there are people who are being released into the streets of OC in the dead of night wearing nothing but paper clothing.
“But we have a court order to release someone. It’d be cruel to leave them in jail.” We can invent solemn sounding obstacles for ourselves, but in a County as rich as this one, it simply defies credibility to believe that there are no non-gratuitously cruel solutions to such situations.
And yes, people’s lives will definitely be saved when we find and implement them.
Fr. Dennis Kriz, OSM, Pastor St. Philip Benizi Catholic Church, Fullerton.
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