Friday's murder conviction in Havre of Anthony Roy St. Dennis, who kicked the life out of Forrest Clayton Salcido in December 2007, hit home among the homeless at the Salcido Drop-In Center.
“It's nice to see somebody get caught,” said Rose Sorrell, 68, who arrived in town by bus from Akron, Ohio, two days earlier. “Anybody that'd want to beat a homeless man - I just don't know. I actually feel good about (the verdict) now.”
Andy Ahlquist sat alone at a nearby table, reading a paperback book while several other men silently watched television.
“I assumed they were guilty,” said Ahlquist, who hadn't heard the verdict but had followed the trial in the news. “Do I feel any safer? No. There are punks running loose, you know. Add alcohol to it and it gets worse.”
St. Dennis, 19, was a senior at Hellgate High School when he and Dustin Strahan, 21, encountered Salcido near the California Street footbridge 13 months ago. Strahan is also charged with homicide. He testified against St. Dennis in the five-day trial and is scheduled to stand trial himself in March.
In his testimony, Strahan said St. Dennis initiated the assault, which he characterized as random and unprovoked. He went to police with information about the assault the following day.
“It's just terrible. I couldn't believe it when I heard what happened,” said a man who identified himself as Eric the Black. “I live on the streets and I'm not a snitch. But if I'd have known what had happened for sure, I would have been the first one to the police station saying, ‘Hey, these two ding-dongs did this.' ”
“Something we've talked a lot about down at the Pov is that Anthony St. Dennis didn't kill a sorority girl,” said Ellie Hill, executive director of the Poverello Center. “He chose Clay Salcido because Clay was what he thought of as an old, homeless bum.”
The guilty verdict and the media attention attracted by the St. Dennis trial underline the value of Salcido's life, as well as the lives of others the Poverello Center serves on a daily basis, Hill said.
Ironically, St. Dennis was one of those who did the serving. Hill said the young man performed court-ordered community service at the Pov following a previous scrape with the law.
A sense of dignity is something those who use the Poverello's services often crave.
Black said that he, too, has chosen to forsake the “rat race” to live on the streets of Missoula after working for years as a sound engineer at a local audio store.
“A lot of the establishment looks down on people of our lifestyle,” he said. “I do it by choice. My last relationship was a disaster, and part of me decided to take a vacation from life.”
But far from being a threat or a nuisance, Black views downtown Missoula as his home and tries to treat it as such. He said he's adopted one particular alley to keep picked up, much like the Adopt-A-Highway program. It keeps him busy.
“There are like six or seven Dumpsters down there and people can't seem to walk across the alley just to throw something in the Dumpster,” said Black.
Businesses appreciate it, he said, and sometimes offer him a free sandwich or pasta.
Like Salcido, Black is a former Navy man. He said he knew Salcido enough to know they shared that in common.
“Forrest was so mellow and so cool, you know?” he said. “I didn't know him real well but I knew him. We talked about our Navy times and things like that, so we had a little connection there.”
Still, Black doesn't feel personally threatened by what happened to Salcido - only hurt and disgusted.
“I've been here for a while and nobody seems to mess with me because I've got an attitude and everybody seems to know me around here,” he said.
“It's one of those deals - I don't know. I don't understand why anybody wants to hurt anybody else. I'm very Buddhist, very much a pacifist, though if you back me into a corner you might get another side of me.”
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Tonja wrote on Jan 12, 2009 10:01 AM: