Man found asleep on York Street and returned home

This morning at 1:16 a man was discovered on York Street, laying against a lamp post. He appeared to be unconscious.

It was -4 degrees celsius outside, and ice was covering the side-walk near him. He was wearing a jeans, winter boots and an orange winter jacket.

The man was laying roughly 10 feet. from Cafe´ Loka, located on the corner of Aberdeen and York Street, and didn’t have any physical signs of having fallen or of being homeless.

He was slouched against the lamppost, with his legs out-stretched and his hands clasped together in his lap and his head leaning against the post.

The Fredericton Police were contacted and given the man’s whereabouts. They picked him up shortly after.

“We know who he is, and we returned him home,” said Sgt. Durling of the Fredericton Police Department. “He actually lives on Dondonald Street.

“He was taken home safely and [without] problems.”

According to the police report there were no signs of drinking or intoxication.

“Most people don’t just fall asleep on the side of the road. So there was probably a reason for it, but there’s nothing in the report that says that,” said Durling.

He also said it’s uncommon in Fredericton to have people fall asleep outside and remain asleep outside without the police department finding them or having a bystander phone the police to have the person in question picked-up and returned home.

“Between the citizens in the city and the police going around the city especially at night, we keep a pretty close eye on that. Where we tend to find people is in the downtown core… Whether that’s got something to do with the shelter or the bars, we don’t know.”

If citizens are found unconscious outside, officers patrolling the streets will pick-up the individual, says Durling, and provide them with shelter.

“We do that in many ways. If they’re local we can drive them home. Maybe they’ve been drinking a little too much, we can take them home if they’re okay.

“We can bring them to the police station and offer them protection here, a place to sleep. We can take them to the shelter, so we work with people as we find them.”

However in some instances, for reasons unknown, some people that officers have found laying outside–even in the winter–prefer to remain outdoors and not seek shelter, or return home.

“They’ll sleep down around the heaters, or you’ll see them sometimes in the stairwells of different apartments and stuff,” said Durling.

“We try to work with those people but that’s a little different because they’re people that chose to be there as opposed to somebody who was drunk and passed out and fell asleep or whatever the case may be.”

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Posted by Bryannah James - The NB Beacon on Jan 26, 2012. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry