HOLLISTER
Michael Martin said he was awakened at 1:30 a.m. Saturday when someone pushed his shopping cart onto him at the bus station where he has been sleeping for the last three weeks.
“I woke up and pushed it off me,” said the soft-spoken homeless man. “I saw a gentleman and I asked, ‘Did you just push my cart over on me?'”
Martin claimed the man then let loose with a string of expletives and names, saying to him, “Get a job, you filthy bum.” It was clear the man had been drinking, Martin said.
“I tried to explain my medical condition to him,” continued Martin, who has a large stature. “I told him I had worked for 46 years of my life. He just said it was ‘a bunch of bull (expletive)’ and walked away.”
Martin then sat down beside his shopping cart, he said, only to have the same man rush around the corner and push the cart onto him again, cutting his arm and banging the cart into his head.
“Then he said, ‘Go ahead and go back to sleep, and I’ll come back and shoot you,'” said Martin, who added that the man then claimed to have recently returned from Iraq where he had served for three terms. “I told him that just because I’m homeless doesn’t mean I’m not an American.”
Martin then began to experience chest pains, so he flagged down passing police officers who called him an ambulance. Hospital staff ran some tests and gave him fluids, discharging him at 9 a.m.
Cindy Parr, who serves on the San Benito County Homeless Task Force and manages the homeless shelter, said this type of problem, as well as many others, needs to be addressed by the county.
“People in the community don’t want to acknowledge that the homeless problem is increasing, but it is,” she said. “As our homeless numbers grow, so do all the problems associated with homelessness.”
One of those problems is this type of pointless assault, according to Parr.
“This sort of thing has got to stop,” she said. “If you know Michael, he is harmless and kind, and for this to happen to him just because he has no where else to sleep is terrible.”
Parr went on to say that no one should have to wake up to violence and then be called terrible names, assaulted again, and then threatened with being shot in their sleep.
As for Martin, he said he is trying to merely get through a difficult time.
“I don’t drink or do drugs,” said homeless man. “I help people with bus schedules when they are confused, and ask any local business owner, I don’t hassle their places. I am out here under circumstances I can’t control and I am doing my best.”
