Behind the Killings of Homeless Men, Portraits of 3 Lives Derailed

Generally he stayed at his great-aunt’s in Washington. Generally he lived on the road. “He would get new telephones like individuals would change socks,” his father mentioned.

In 2019, going through an assault cost, Mr. Brevard was discovered incompetent to face trial and was despatched for “competency restoration” to St. Elizabeths Hospital, a psychiatric heart the place Mr. Holmes had additionally hung out. He was discharged after every week, regardless of his father’s pleas that he be admitted for longer remedy.

Mr. Brevard’s father mentioned he had later tried to get his son admitted to a special clinic, Washington Hospital Middle, however was advised that “he’s an grownup, and I can’t have him dedicated.”

He added, “He didn’t wish to be dedicated, however he wasn’t in his proper thoughts.”

Mr. Brevard was launched from his most up-to-date jail stretch final July, simply earlier than he turned 30. Some time later, he acquired a job at Metropolis Vineyard DC, an upscale restaurant and live performance venue on the block behind the New York Avenue Males’s Emergency Shelter, the place he was staying.

One other shelter resident, who gave his title solely as Anthony, 50, knew Mr. Brevard by sight. One evening this month, Anthony mentioned, he and a buddy have been ingesting within the alley behind the shelter, two blocks from Mr. Holmes’s tent, once they noticed a person who appeared like Mr. Brevard stroll by, twice in a brief span of time, along with his face coated. “I mentioned to myself, ‘Why is he coated up like that?’” Anthony mentioned.

Later, he heard gunshots. Mr. Holmes’s burned physique was found the following morning. Two days after that, prosecutors mentioned, Mr. Brevard headed to New York.

‘The place he died — that’s his residence’

Within the polyglot open-air market in Decrease Manhattan the place Chinatown merges with SoHo and the streets bustle with vacationers and hawkers of purses and watches, Abdoulaye Coulibaly was as acquainted as he was mysterious.