An allegedly homeless or vagrant man was found dead in a local creek last fall, according to a Dallas whistleblower who witnessed the incident.
Randy Griffin, a landscaping contractor, claimed to The Dallas Express that he discovered the body while working outside a building near the intersection of Harry Hines and Lombardy in Dallas in September — within Council Member Omar Narvaez’s District 6.
Narvaez’s district has struggled with crime and is currently seeing spikes in prostitution, narcotics, robbery, and car theft, according to data retrieved from the Dallas Police Department.
Griffin explained that he had been driving a tractor when he was met by a rotten odor.
“I smelled something,” he described. “I thought it was a dead fish or something.”
Griffin says he began to search for the source of the smell, leading him further into the nearby offshoots of Joe’s Creek.
“The water was probably 3 inches in that creek bed, maybe 4 inches, but I turned around and went back by, and there was a guy’s hand sticking out of the debris, and I got off that tractor and looked at it,” Griffin recounted.
“It was a body,” he continued, noting that he called Dallas police. Alongside other debris in the creek was a mangled tent, leading Griffin to conclude that the dead person was likely homeless or a vagrant.
The hand was covered with maggots that were in the process of consuming the decaying body, according to images and videos obtained by The Dallas Express.
The corner of Harry Hines and Lombardy is close to several overpasses where homeless people, vagrants, and panhandlers often congregate.
“Well, you know, they’re just all over,” said Griffin. “I mean [they] pretty much have left me alone, but I mean, they’re making messes on street corners, you know, parking [themselves] underneath bridges, it’s just not a normal thing.”
“I don’t know what the solutions are, but hopefully, there’s something in the making. I personally don’t know what to do about it,” Griffin added. “There’s a lot of it, and hopefully, they can come to a solution of how to solve it.”
The alleged incident described by Griffin comes as the City of Dallas has struggled to address what Mayor Eric Johnson has called the “scourge of homelessness.”
Late last week, Johnson announced a new task force to address the issue, as reported by The Dallas Express.
“We have residents of this city who … see growing numbers of encampments in their neighborhoods. They see people passed out on the sidewalks,” the mayor explained.
“They see people walking naked on the streets. They see trash. They see waste,” he continued. “They see tents pitched on our freeway underpasses.”
“They want and they expect to live in a city that does not tolerate, and certainly does not facilitate, disorder,” Johnson added.
Some have criticized the mayor, suggesting that the task force is little more than an election stunt to generate support.
“More City Hall Nonsense,” Mark Roberts, a Hillcrest Forest resident, claimed. “Of course, he’s waited until [just] before the election to take this act. And the Task Force recommendations are due on June 15…[just] after the election.”
Roberts continued, “This is all for show … This Task Force will make the same old recommendations — if we just throw more money at the problem, it will go away. It won’t.”
Last year alone, over 5,000 people suspected to be homeless or vagrant were arrested in Dallas County. Law enforcement whistleblowers have claimed, however, that they have been instructed to keep their “hands off the homeless.”
A recent poll conducted by The Dallas Express found that 52% of Dallas respondents believed that homelessness, vagrancy, and panhandling were serious problems. Some local businesses have hired private security to prevent customers from being accosted, as The Dallas Express reported.
The Dallas Express has reached out to the Dallas Police Department for more information concerning this incident but has not received a response at the time of publication.
The Dallas Express also reached out to Council Member Omar Narvaez about the rotting body found in his district, but he failed to respond.
For more Dallas News, discover how Monty Bennett calls to help the homeless in a speech to the Metropolitan Civic and Business Association.