Original drawing from http://artismygift.blogspot.ca/2010/03/hooded-figure.html. Used with belatedly obtained permission.
Following the brutal slayings of homeless men in Anaheim, Yorba Linda and Placentia in the past few weeks, Police forces from around North Orange County have launched a man hunt searching for a serial killer. In separate brazen murders the same person has taken the life of three men using a sharp weapon to stab each of the victims several times. Police have a grainy video showing a figure wearing a hoodie approaching one of the victims before his murder. Two of the murders took place at night and the third during daylight in the late afternoon.
“We believe these murders were likely committed by the same suspect and feel he is extremely dangerous to the public,” Anaheim Chief of Police John Welter told reporters today. Police are very interested in finding out information about a white four door Toyota that was picked up in the surveillance footage. ”This vehicle is of particular interest to homicide investigators,” Welter said.
The body of the first victim, James Patrick McGillivray, 53, was found near a shopping center in Placentia on Dec. 21. Police said their best lead so far is footage from a security camera that showed a man of thin build and average height, dressed in black and “lying in wait.” A week later, the body of Lloyd Middaugh, 42, was found on a riverbed trail near Tustin Avenue in Anaheim. A third man, Paulus Smit, 57, was found dead with stab wounds outside a library in Yorba Linda last Friday.
Homeless in the area have been advised to stay in shelters if possible until the serial killer is apprehended. Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens reported that “We want to get the information out to our homeless community throughout the county to be careful to not be alone if possible, to not go into the dark areas or isolated areas as much as possible.”
[The figure in the picture above is simply a general artist's rendering and bears no known resemblance to the serial killer.]
My police contact tells me that these murder scenes are particularly gruesome.
He states that grainy security video recordings are usually the case, and that they aren’t that helpful when the resolution is poor. 7-Elevens apparently have quality systems in place, but they are not cheap. If your cameras for home or business are outdated this might be a reminder that a new one could be a lot more useful, even in low light circumstances.
This, of course, raises the question of how many homeless there are compared to available shelter beds. My guess: not nearly enough. I’d think that, to save lives, we would want to set up temporary shelters where homeless people could congregate in sufficient numbers so that this person wouldn’t feel it was safe to target them. And yes, before anyone asks, that includes the park near my house.
Doesn’t this make you fantasize about being a decoy homeless person with a hidden gun?
Okay. Loaded with an animal tranquilizer dart.
You are watching too many episodes of law and order – in real life you are more likely to be killed than to catch the guy.
Well, I did say fantasize
I agree with you on this one Mr. Diamond.
Yep, yep, yep,
Another excuse to call upon branding and herding people for their own protection.
Heck, you got Vern wanting to get a gun now!!!! What is the world coming to?
I think I read that Supervisor John Moorlach is chairing the county homeless commission charged with eliminating homelessness. Perhaps he should step up to the plate and urge his colleagues to offer a reward leading to the arrest and prosecution of the person or person(s) doing these assaults. Are you listening, Supervisor?
“Eliminating homelessness” — if I were Fiala I’d be asking you what you are accusing Moorlach of. Hmmmmm?
Advising homeless to find a homeless shelter until the killer is caught? Why not advise the homeless to head to the shelter to get some resources to get “un-homeless”. What a great excuse for these folks to get off the streets and start figuring stuff out.
Like figuring out how to get a job in a state (and a nation) with massive unemployment?
Do you realize that 30% of the homeless are mentally ill (mentalillnesspolicy.org).
These are people that through no fault of their own are schizophrenics, psychotics, and dual diagnosis patients that have been “dumped” by hospitals because they have no insurance. They literally dump these people onto the streets when they can’t pay any more. They forage through dumpsters and trash cans for their food, and now have to worry about a serial killer.
Do you expect these casualties of society to just straighten up, and pull themselves together and ” get “un-homeless” ?
What do you you think that we as a society should do with the mentally ill?
I’m sure that you can “start figuring stuff out,” and give us your plan.
Maybe not all 100 percent of them Demagogue. However, I happen to know that there are many resources that don’t get utilized by the other 70 percent who are not mentally I’ll. And no, not all 70 percent will get “un-homeless”, but many of them might get a taste of what it is like to sleep in a real bed (even a shitty thin shelter mattress is better than the gutter) and have some sort of hope to look towards. And no, I am not referring to this magic hope Obama was apparently going to bring.
Awolf…
Did I miss your plan for the mentally ill ? Yes, I did because it’s not there.
The 30% that I was referring to are just the ones that have gone through the system. A lot of the other 70% are undiagnosed, but still have challenges unrelated to being deficient in character.
There are a lot of veterans in the homeless population that are guilty of nothing more than being trained to be killers, and are then having a hard time trying to blend back into a society where those skills don’t do them any good. There’s not a big demand for killers here in the U.S.; so they can’t get hired in this challenging employment market, and they end up on the street. Add to that the huge cuts to the VA for mental help, and you can see why they are on their own.
There are also people that have been laid off from jobs that have been offshored by corporations to take advantage of tax breaks, and also people bankrupted by medical bills, etc. I won’t even go into the housing current housing market. There are a lot of reasons that people end up being homeless.
So you look at homelessness as some sort of character deficiency, and ignore that we have for the most part put these people out on the street. And you would like to blame them all for their predicaments. We used to have mental health facilities that took care of a lot of these people, but, we have closed them.
We do have the ability to house this segment of the population, we just choose not to.
It’s true that about 10% of the homeless are just slackers. They are just trying to game the system, or just aren’t motivated to have a Visa Platinum card like you and I are. They are fine with living on your couch, or on the streets. That is true of all societies, both modern and ancient, and even the honeybees (the slacker bees are called drones).
So, yes there are people who might benefit from a taste of sleeping on a shelter cot, and think that is something to aspire to. But maybe not as many as you think.
So do we make the less fortunate live under bridges and in the bushes out of sight, or could we find another more humane solution ? Or should we just blame them and despise them ?
I never alluded to having a plan…just a comment on how sad when a murderer is the cause for panic to save homeless people. Society has let them down and I was bringing up that I thought that it shouldn’t have to take a murderer for them to get shelter. My “figuring stuff out” comment read way worse than I intended it to say. What I meant is they should WANT to find shelter all of the time, not just when murderers are on the lose…and, as a society, we need to PROVIDE this shelter for them, and until we do there is no end to this epidemic. As far as a plan…you got me? What do you think should be done? You seemed to have done a lot of homework in providing me lots of stats. Care to share your plan?
I don’t have a plan to eliminate ALL homelessness, but maybe a portion of it.
In 1967, Gov. Ronald Reagan signed the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act which essentially emptied out the mental hospitals. Those people now live on the streets for the most part.
If the mentally ill were in hospitals being treated, instead of on the street self-medicating, that would be an improvement for them and society as well.
There are a lot of other people that need help as well, and I commend you for your helping this often ignored segment of our population.
Good on ‘ya!
Read my first post. All I originally commented on was the fact that a murderer is the catalyst for getting these homeless people into shelter. All I was saying is it is confusing why this shouldn’t be a motivation for both the homeless and our society to do without some nut on the loose. I get everything you are saying about the homeless. I too have a heart for them. I’ve spent a hell of a lot of time with them, brining them food and clothes… Enough to know that they all aren’t lazy. My original post was just about how silly the article was to warn homeless folks about a predator and how they needed to seek shelter to stay safe. The streets aren’t safe…shouldn’t they be seeking shelter all along? Shouldn’t society be out rescuing them all along? That was my point. Sorry if my poor writing didn’t make that clear. My bad.
Hey, just to let you know, the artist who did the drawing, although flattered that you chose to use this drawing, wants you to link the drawing back to the original blog post (http://artismygift.blogspot.ca/2010/03/hooded-figure.html). Thanks.
Thank you for the information and the admonition. The link information has now been included in the caption. The original writers have been sacked.