Buena Vista Park neighbors wary after body found

Buena Vista Park neighbors wary after body found

San Francisco's Buena Vista Park was quiet as daylight broke Friday. The only sounds along the steep ascent of one of the park's many hills were the chirpings of birds, the steps of a lone dog walker and a rustling from the brush.

Out of the bushes emerged Dave Thompson, 24. Wearing a brown plaid shirt and tan overalls with a rip in the back, he dragged with him a dusty black sleeping bag, a backpack, and the scent of last night's cigarettes and this morning's hangover.

The presence of young homeless people like Thompson is nothing new in the Haight-Ashbury park, but after a smoldering body was discovered early June 10 north of the tennis courts, frequent park-goers have become a little more wary of the illegal campers.

As the mystery behind the body grows - police still have not made an identification - so do the park-goers' suspicions and concerns.

"My first thought was that it was probably a homeless person," Orion Pitts, 60, said of the man who police believe was a homicide victim. "There are so many homeless and indigent and young kids here."

Two kinds

Richard Magary, the Buena Vista Neighborhood Association steering committee chair, said he sees two populations among the park campers. There are the hard-core homeless, the majority of whom suffer from mental disorders or substance abuse issues - and then there are the street kids.

This time of year, the number of people living in the park increases, mostly because of an influx of younger people, said Capt. Denis O'Leary, head of the Police Department's Park Station.

"We can cite as many as 25 and as little as five" per week, O'Leary said. "It has to do with the weather, it has to do with concerts, it has to do with other events."

O'Leary wouldn't comment on the investigation into the charred body. But Thompson said the crime doesn't sound like something that a homeless person living in the park would commit.

Violent aspects

Thompson says he has lived all over the country for the past 11 years and spent the past two nights in the park. He doesn't think of himself as homeless, but rather, "houseless" - a "global citizen" who carries his home on his back.

Thompson admitted that violence is a fact of life in his world. A scar runs down his right cheek from when a homeless man took a scalpel to his face. His left earlobe is torn as if someone ripped an earring from it.

But murder? "Nothing ever goes that far," Thompson said. "There are some wing nuts out there, but not the street kids."

Last week's death wasn't the first homicide in Buena Vista Park, however. In July, a homeless man stabbed to death another homeless man in the park in a dispute over a woman.

Unpredictability

Walt Bell, 49, runs the nearby Black Nose Trading Company pet services store and walks his dogs in the park. He says many of the park's illegal campers are harmless, but he can never be sure.

"It's sort of, 'What do you know, what don't you know?' " Bell said. "You run into some who are 'pharmaceutically adjusted.' One guy just came running at us. Another guy came out of the bushes, his pants around his ankles, stoned out of his mind."

Officers from Park Station run patrols starting at 4 a.m. and ending at 9 p.m., O'Leary said. Magary said he sees officers going in during the day and their headlights searching during the night.

But in the two days Thompson spent camped in Buena Vista Park, he said, he didn't encounter any police officers telling him to move along.