We may never know what happened in the hours preceding Michael Knight’s death.
The 56-year-old man was discharged from a local hospital on the evening of December 4 and brought to 2100 Lakeside men’s homeless shelter.
He got out of the car, but never entered the shelter. He was found the next morning a couple of blocks away, at the corner of East 18th and St. Clair, where he apparently froze to death. (The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner is still finalizing the cause of death.)
It was during a major winter storm with Lake Effect snow and an Arctic cold front. Schools closed and weather advisories were issued as temperatures that night dropped to the low 20s.
For Knight and other unsheltered people, the harsh winds made it feel like less than 20 degrees in downtown Cleveland. The father of two sat on a sidewalk and waited for the warmth of a sunrise that would never come.
His heartbreaking story is unfortunately not unique.
“There’s so many incidents like that,” said Dennis Ashton, a street outreach worker with NEOCH, the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless. “That’s just the first one this year.”