Witnessing a Suspicious Death While Grabbing a Jacket

In May 2022, on a rare non-working Saturday for husband, we went with a friend to get lunch at a vegan restaurant within a cidery. We normally don't eat at vegan places and normally don't drink cider (and certainly don't travel outside our neighborhood for either of these things), but this vegan food was worth the drive. The cider was good, too, though now both those places are closed.

While there I ran into a friend from grad school, who was friends with the cidery owner. She and her husband chased around their kid who was just getting good at running and was very interested in my friend's giant dog. We had amazing food, lingered over ciders, then decided to go get a beer closer to home.

View of the water tower.

The brewery around the corner, one of the places we heavily supported when Covid was real bad, is extremely dog friendly. We got a pig ear and beer-can plush for the dog and took our pints to the street seating area. It was chilly and we joked about asking them to turn on the fire pit even though it was still the middle of the day. But eventually I got too chilly and decided to run home real quick to grab a hoodie. I would have been gone 10 minutes tops.

Half a block ahead of my alley I saw what looked like a trans woman approach a man with some urgency, then they both went down the alley. I think I only noticed them because she was wearing a neon pink top, but thought nothing of it otherwise. I turned down my alley to find them standing near a garage, and she turned to look at me, kind of worried. Then I saw bare feet on the ground, sticking out and up wicked witch style.

Gorgeous and well crafted kitchen.

The garage was partially obscured by a fence, hiding the scene from the alley entrance. In seconds I had full view of a second man lying on his back in front of the garage, face towards the sky, eyes and mouth open. The woman stood a few feet away while the first man talked to 911. A fourth man was performing CPR and mouth to mouth, which I remember being surprised by.

"I found him," the woman said as I passed. "He's starting to turn blue." I muttered something like oh no, paused for a second, but then decided there wasn't much I could do and, not wanting to be a looky-loo, continued on towards my apartment. The cops and paramedics would be there soon, someone was already doing CPR, and I didn't have anything that could help. They seemed to have things under control.

Nice enough bedroom.

A few steps later it occurred to me that leaving a trans woman, who was also Black, with two white dudes and a possibly dying guy to the inevitable cops might not be best. Plus, maybe I had something at home? I didn't know, but felt I should offer. So I turned back.

"Is there something I can grab?" I asked the woman. "I live here, I don't know what I have or what would be helpful."

She wasn't sure. So I stood with her. She was shivering, possibly because of the chill but more likely because of what she witnessed. The first man was still on the phone and she leaned her body towards him a bit. "I have narcan, tell them," she said, then paused. "Ask them if I should give him the narcan." The man focused on the phone call.

Spacious bathroom.

While I mentally ran through my household items, I took a closer look at the three men in front of me. The man on the phone was probably around my age, had the posture of someone who had clearly been summoned away from something else and was doing the only thing he could think to do. The man doing CPR faced away from me and all I could see was he was chubby and wore a backwards hat. I wondered if he knew the man on the ground or if he was being a really good Good Samaritan. In these Covid times, would I do mouth to mouth on a stranger? Based on my initial surprise, not likely.

The man on the ground, definitely turning blue, was a scary sight for a quiet residential alley. But he would have looked out of place even if he had been upright and his normal skin color. For one, he wore hospital clothes. For another, he had no shoes. His hospital top was open, revealing multiple EKG electrodes attached to his chest. He looked older, maybe early 60s, with thinning whitish gray hair. The nearest hospital was only two miles away but surely he didn't walk out of it? The way he was angled next to the garage, top of his head pointing at the garage door and feet stretched towards the alley, didn't look like a natural fall. He had to have been placed on the ground that way.

Rooftop patio.

The paramedics finally arrived. Five or six EMTs jumped out and took charge. One relieved the guy doing CPR. The others opened equipment in plastic packaging and tossed what they didn't need aside, attending to the man on the ground and grabbing more equipment from the ambulance. A minute later the cops arrived. They prioritized the bystanders, talking first to the man who called them. I didn't hear his conversation but he shrugged, shook his head, pointed towards the woman standing next to me, and talked for a while longer. I noticed another woman, probably the first man's wife or girlfriend, lingering at the alley entrance, watching. I wondered what they'd been doing when he was summoned.

The woman next to me was fidgety and still shivering. She couldn't find her phone in her overnight bag (it was in there, she assured me, just buried deep). I offered to call it so she could get it more quickly, and she gave me her number. Got the phone.

Combo living room and dining room.

We mumbled a bit about how crazy this was. I asked her how she got involved. And that's where this takes the situation from highly suspicious to probably a murder.

She was taking a walk headed west down the same street I took going back to my apartment. She'd later talk to me about how she enjoys going for long walks to clear her head, an activity and purpose we share. At the alley she saw a black Mercedes with a couple of men standing next to it. 

She asked me, did I know the car? I didn't think so—there was a nicer car usually parked there but I couldn't be sure it was a Mercedes, or even a black sedan. I'd never seen the owner.

Long, narrow garage.

The men were dragging something from the car. Her spidey senses raised, she paused at the alley to watch. People with nice cars don't usually dump shit in alleys. She didn't see the man directly. But when the Mercedes drove away quickly after, she wandered in to see what they'd left. That's when she saw the older man in his hospital clothes lying on his back on the cement. She hailed the first person she saw and asked him to call the cops. All this was happening as I decided I needed a jacket and left the brewery, but I'd never have noticed a black Mercedes, even if it was leaving my alley. A minute or two later and I was standing next to her.

I don't know how much time passed, it felt like a long time just standing there. The paramedics slowed, the one doing chest compressions got up. They gathered up some of the equipment. The man had died. I couldn't see his face and was too far away to really know if his chest was moving, but his open chest looked gray. And the paramedic activity said everything else. 

Built in cabinets.

Then one of the cops finally approached us. I only said a few words to him, as I wasn't involved, but I jotted down his badge number. He spoke to the woman next to me for a few minutes, she reiterating everything she'd already told me. Leaving most of their trash behind in the alley, the paramedics loaded up, bringing the man on a stretcher into the back, sheet over his body.

They drove off, cops following. The woman and I had nothing left to do, so we turned in the other direction. I walked her to the end of the alley and we hugged. She would continue on her walk, or head back home, and I'd go inside for my jacket and return to the brewery. I'd been gone for a long time by then. Naturally, husband and friend had made guesses as to why I'd been gone so long and were shocked to hear the truth.

Since I had her number, I texted the woman I stood with later on to check in. She'd had a shock but it wasn't her first time. Being in her community, she unfortunately has experienced those she knew and loved lose or take their lives. She wanted to do what she could to prevent it in others, get through each day, and take time to appreciate beauty.

Rooftop solar panels.

When I think about that day, I wonder how she's doing. If I've passed her in a store or walking through the neighborhood, if she's still in San Diego, if she and her friends are scared. If she ever found out anything about what had happened that day, or if she didn't want to look. I looked for a couple of weeks, checking the news, doing google searches, checking the city website, not knowing where this strange death might have been reported. If it would have been reported. If there'd been any evidence of foul play other than the woman's story. If the cops even checked or if the cause of death was something basic like a heart attack, the EKG monitors and hospital clothes barely registering on the cops' list of weird things they've seen. 

A year later, the house and garage were demolished. Not because of that, it's just what's been happening in that neighborhood. A single family home is removed and a multi-family something goes in its place, always luxury, about half the time it's ugly. Now the lot is home to four luxury townhouses. One sold before the building was even finished, just shy of two years after the man died in the alley, for $1.4 million. Two others sold for slightly less shortly after it was finished, almost on the anniversary. The last lingered for a year, finally selling for a little under $1.2 million.

What five million dollars in townhouses looks like.

Before the fourth one sold, husband and I stopped by during an open house. We'd talked about buying before, and even started the process, but having over a million dollar townhouses on the same block we lived in an apartment that was infested with crickets, where a man died suspiciously in the alley, made it seem impossible. (Happily, it ended up being possible.) I wanted to see where this ghost was likely haunting and what you could get for a million-plus townhouse these days.

The townhouse did have some nice features. Three floors not counting the rooftop patio, a thoughtful layout, massive great room on floor two, decent views, garage, and touches like soft close doors and convenient storage. But was it worth a million dollars? The only outside space was the rooftop patio, the room you'd want to use for a guest or office room was pretty small, and there wasn't even a balcony. It felt so inside. It was nice, but not for me.