A man was crushed to death in Vallejo during a city-run cleanup on Christmas Eve, city officials said Tuesday.
Vallejo homeless advocate Eli Smith said she knew the man, James Oakley II, as a local unhoused resident. She said he was living in the area where workers were clearing debris. The Solano County Coroner’s Office confirmed Oakley’s name, identifying him as a 58-year-old American Canyon resident. Smith said he grew up there.
The disclosure comes two months after the Dec. 24 incident, during which officials said a public works crew “encountered” an injured man who was later confirmed to have been “compressed within the debris.”
The coroner determined the cause of death was multiple blunt force injuries. In a press release, the city said those were “likely sustained accidentally by the heavy equipment.”
City officials did not immediately return requests for comment.
Smith said accelerated efforts to clear encampments and remove unhoused people’s property have left them more vulnerable to incidents like this.
“People are forced to become less visible because they no longer have tents. They are not in a community. They are no longer as noticeable because they don’t have shelter,” she said. “People will sleep under a tarp. People will try to find something to kind of get underneath.”
The Vallejo Police Department investigated the death and found no indication of “intent to cause harm, bodily injury or death,” city officials said, and the district attorney’s office found there wasn’t enough evidence to file criminal charges.
Other people experiencing homelessness have been killed in similar incidents. A 33-year-old woman was killed in Modesto in 2018 when a frontloader hit her during a CalTrans cleanup. Last month, an Atlanta man was crushed inside a tent by a bulldozer during a cleanup ahead of Martin Luther King Jr. Day festivities.
Cities across California and beyond have ramped up encampment sweeps since the Supreme Court granted them more power to enforce anti-camping laws last summer.
“The city sends its deepest condolences to the family of the deceased person,” Vallejo City Manager Andrew Murray said in a statement. “This was a tragic accident.”
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