Blog: I Knew the Homeless Man Killed by the Amtrak Train in Davis

Substance-abusing members of the Davis homeless community keep dropping like flies.

Danny Gene Ferguson, who was fatally struck by an Amtrak train last week, was the most recent. Of course, when the GF asked me a few days ago if I had heard that “another homeless man got hit by a train,” I told her I hadn’t. But as the publisher of The Spare Changer, I know just about every homeless person in this community.

The next day I got the answer from Davis Patch, the Davis Enterprise, and two or three locals (some homeless or at risk of becoming homeless). They confirmed that it was “Danny,” whom I’ve known for 5 years or more as the little old middle aged man who panhandled in front of Chipotle on E street.

Although a recipient of SSI, white bearded “Danny Claus” consistently woke up to beer, went to bed to beer, and woke up again to beer, setting out to panhandle again. Actually, not to “bed,” or even to “bag.” Danny slept with little more than a light blanket on top of a flattened out piece of cardboard, hidden between the car wash on the downtown side and some brush that lines the edge of the railroad track rocks.

I know, because many a night I have taken him there. Danny and I were not “palsy-walsy” or anything, but we respected each other; he was one of the rare homeless to whom I would and did spare a few dollars. He was a sign flyer, not aggressive at all, and usually sat on his rump, legs stretched and parted, sometime akimbo, sometimes asleep even, and always with $1 and a little change on top of the bill, just so you knew what to do.

Danny had recently been out of the hospital for alcohol-related internal-organ problems for the second time in a year that I know of.

Danny, to my knowledge, never used a suitcase. And Danny did not run, to catch trains, or to “beat them.”

A witness in the Davis Enterprise said that the man struck by the train was running. It was not specified if he was running to hop the train or if he lost his footing on the rocks and leaned toward the train and got side-swiped, or if he was trying to cross the tracks and misjudged the time and distance.

I only mention this -- my lament and sympathy for the untimely death of our beloved friend Santa Dan -- because the very first thing I thought was that Danny committed suicide by train, as a couple of other’s may have done in the past. That, or that he was killed by alcohol and healthy dose community neglect.

Community neglect can take many, many forms. One such form is allowing the mentally ill or otherwise socially dysfunctional to walk our streets, cross our railroad tracks and purchase alcohol in between. If life is about priorities, it seems that care for the violation of a person’s civil rights has trumped care for the specific person. It shouldn’t.

For example, take “Peter,” the 6-foot-5-inch bearded homeless man often seen walking downtown and along Olive Drive. I know him as a man who does not panhandle much, but will accept charities forced upon him because he so obviously seems to need them. Smelly, tattered, soiled and digging for cigarette butts daily, Peter can’t be “helped” because he doesn’t commit crimes, so the police can do “nothing.”

Similarly, Danny could only be “helped” the times when he was near death, and could be taken to a hospital to combat alcoholic attacks on his liver, kidneys and pancreas.

I think it worth saying this in the hopes you will think hard and strong about it: The railroad has been over the coals with political pressure about their responsibility for the inordinate number of railroad train/pedestrian attacks in this corridor.

They have sent officers to ticket anyone and everyone crossing the property between Olive Drive and Downtown. This route has been in use for decades and threatens to become even more popular if the southeast area just “on the other side of the tracks” is developed.

Police have ticketed students, for whom this is not only a savings of 10 minutes or more, but also walkers like me, and even slower walkers like Danny.

There is another way to cross the tracks, but Richards Boulevard near the IN-N-OUT Burger is not only out of the way, but it poses it’s own dangers: You must cross a barely regulated major boulevard at the mouth of a freeway, cross a light, and travel by tunnel underneath;  a tunnel that is a tight squeeze for bicycles moving at speed and pedestrians too.

The net result is pressure on Davis City Council to come up with a solution that removes responsibility for deaths such as Danny’s. That has taken the form of fast action toward the construction of an “at grade” safe and legal crossing.

A crossing will come, but it will not solve or even alleviate the problem as it relates to the homeless, and here is why: The problem as it relates to the homeless community is not a railroad safe crossing, or lack of it. The problem, my friends, is the liquor store just on the southeast side. No liquor store, no crossing the tracks to get their “medicine;” their courage in a bottle every day.

The focus will continue to be on the fence and the railroad crossing, but the issue of homelessness should be at the forefront in discussing the death of Danny Gene Furgeson.

Here’s the bottom line: Unless you are dead drunk, crossing the tracks with no train in sight or earshot is, in fact -- politics aside -- safe and pragmatic. Commuters stand in the median waiting for the train by the dozen, and that is far, far more dangerous, is it not? But that is legal, insured and… pragmatic, isn’t it?

Only careful design of an at-grade crossing placed with the above concerns in the forefront will result in anything but a city budget boondoggle... Danny’s demographic will otherwise be neglected. What to do?

 Do something about that private property’s road to the tracks.

Shut down the damn liquor store.

Dismantle The Amtrak Snake shaped benches where they drink.

So long Danny, expect company.

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