WEST MEMPHIS, Ark. — Police are investigating the death of a homeless man, who was found frozen in Northeast Memphis.
Authorities haven’t released the man’s name, but the Shelby County Health Department confirmed he died of hypothermia.
He was found in a vacant building in the 3600 block of Jackson Avenue. Others were also there, living in similar circumstances.
From the front, it looks like any other vacant building. But from behind, a whole community of people are leaning on only each other for warmth.
One homeless man, Gary Goldberger, fought back tears as he talked about what he saw Tuesday morning.
“It’s just…a terrible situation,” he said.
Goldberger spends most of his days behind that same empty building on Jackson Avenue.
He was there when police found a man frozen to death right beside a fire pit.
“He got full of liquor, and he laid down in front of the fire and went to sleep,” he said.
Goldberger only knew the man by a street name, but claims he had struggled for a long time, moving place to place.
“The bridge right here…he was sleeping under there for a couple weeks I’ve been told,” he said.
The low temperature Monday night was 21 degrees, but the wind made it feel more like 1 degree.
Goldberger is currently sleeping in an abandoned home with no electricity.
He said he hadn’t even heard about a warming center open at the Orange Mound Community Center, and he thinks the city needs to do more to protect those with nowhere to go.
“Some of these vacant buildings, open them up to the homeless,” he said. “Make them homeless shelters.”