A photo of a hand-written memorial note left near the Pine St I-5 overpass was posted on the Seattle reddit. The sign, left near the underpass, remembers a man in his mid-30s named Jeff who was homeless, had mental issues and had a “heart of gold,” according to the note.
CHS does not yet know exact details about the note, but the photo came on the heels of a story last week about an assault under the overpass. We have confirmed that Jeff was not the victim who had been hit in the head with a blunt object during that August 1 assault case.
The note paints a slightly different picture of the area than the SPD officer that authored the assault report, who wrote, “This area is a no man’s land populated by the homeless, mental cases, drug addicts and sundry criminals. The area is littered with garbage, feces, narcotics paraphernalia, grafitti (sic) and slumbering drunks.”
Meanwhile, the bike cops participating in Monday’s “tweetalong” checked-in on the residents near the site of “a recent DOA.” We have not yet confirmed if they are referring to Jeff:
We will update when we learn more.
The past week has not been good for people near Capitol Hill’s I-5 overpasses. As we reported Monday, a man broke his leg August 4 in an apparent fall from the Denny Way I-5 overpass onto the express lanes below.
From the SPD tweet, it appears that WSDOT is finally going to do something about this camp…long overdue.
It is…or was….the City’s policy to offer some social service help (housing options, drug&alcohol treatment, etc.) to denizens of such camps prior to the cleanup. This was happening during the Nickel’s administration, but I’m not sure if it has been continued. I’m guessing that WSDOT does not do this at all, and this camp is on WSDOT property.