It’s March 2023. A homeless Spokane man named Seamus “Shame Dog” Galligan overdoses on fentanyl on a street in southern California. After getting out of jail for stealing from a local deli, he boarded a Greyhound bus, heading back to San Diego to be with his father. But after missing his connection in Anaheim, he finds a hit of fentanyl. A month of detoxing in jail has weakened his tolerance. So he makes the miscalculation that killed so many of his friends. He inhales a bit too much, holds his breath a tad too long. His dad waits for him to call to come pick him up. First hours, then days.
It’s April 2023. A homeless Spokane man named Jeremy Root is stabbed multiple times. His attackers are just kids. Nobody’s over eighteen, but all of them have knives. He’s far from the first homeless victim of violent juveniles. It’s one more hazard of living on the streets of Spokane, one more way to die. The knives come for him on the Monroe Street Bridge, where there’s little room to run. Maybe he’s stabbed five times, maybe as many as 17. The sun has set — he doesn’t want to just pass out right there, where no one would find him. So he staggers back across the bridge toward the downtown library, toward where other homeless people are gathered, the trail of his blood dripping behind him.
It’s January 2024. A homeless Spokane man named Joseph Sampson has almost everything he owns stolen. His backpack, gone. His sleeping bag, gone. It was just another indignity he’d experienced in his dozen years on the Spokane streets. He’d been arrested, harassed and booted from public buildings. He’d felt the bitter cold bite through his gloves until he couldn’t feel his hands anymore. He’d made close friends, then grieved their deaths…