Man who froze to death was turned away from Chattanooga shelter (with video)

Ambulance crew members work with police as they remove the body of a man on East 11th Street on Tuesday morning in Chattanooga. The man is believed to have frozen to death overnight while sleeping on the ground near a railroad track.

The Chattanooga Community Kitchen exists to save lives.

Yet the homeless man found dead just down 11th Street on Tuesday morning -- apparently from exposure -- had been turned away from the kitchen's cold-weather overnight shelter just hours before.

Executive Director Jens Christensen said the Community Kitchen isn't designed or equipped to be an overnight shelter but it's an option for people who have nowhere else to go.

"It's solely for the purpose of keeping people from dying on the street," he said.

But the kitchen demands that people staying there be non-combative.

"If you start threatening the safety of the other people, then you will be asked to leave," Christensen said.

The man's death underscores the danger the homeless face when the weather turns cold. Meteorologists expect Chattanooga to see lows around 10 degrees the next two nights with a wind chill that will make it feel like minus 10.

A total of 144 people with no place to go took cover at the Community Kitchen on Monday night, when temperatures plunged to the low 20s after a day of rain, and wind chills made it seem even colder.

Rules are needed to keep order in the shelter, and drinking and drunkenness aren't allowed. Officials do bend the rules now and then out of compassion as long as the individual isn't belligerent.

But witnesses say 64-year-old Douglas King was both of those things Monday night -- drinking and belligerent.

He was confronted about his drinking and was asked to leave the kitchen. He said he had someplace else to go and headed outside.

Some 12 hours later his body was found a short distance from the Community Kitchen, near a series of painted trestles adjacent to the railroad tracks in the 600 block of East 11th Street. His body was surrounded by beer bottles.

The cause of death is pending results from the medical examiner's office, but it appears to be weather exposure-related, according to the Chattanooga Police Department. There was no sign of foul play.

Dr. Ben C. Smith, an emergency room physician at Erlanger hospital, said cold weather exposure can lead to hypothermia.

On average, Smith said, the body begins to shut down at a body temperature of 90-95 degrees. That's when severe shivering starts. At 85-90 degrees, the person may experience confusion and hallucinations, lethargy, slurred speech and a slowed heart rate. At 84 degrees, abnormal heart rhythms occur. At 73, breathing ceases, and at a body temperature of 68 degrees, the heart stops beating.

Smith said other factors can increase a person's risk for hypothermia.

"The worst-case scenario for hypothermia would be wet, windy and very cold weather conditions," Smith said.

Drugs, particularly alcohol, have been implicated in many cases of severe hypothermia and hypothermic deaths, Smith said.

"Alcohol intake increases heat loss by increasing blood flow to the skin," Smith said. "This effect, known as vasodilation, is especially dangerous because it paradoxically makes a person feel warmer when they are most at risk for hypothermia."

Christensen said the man never officially checked in but fell over drunk while standing outside the facility and police asked him to move along.

Christensen said the man's death was the second weather-related fatality in Chattanooga in three years.

At the Community Kitchen on Tuesday, 50-year-old Daryl Lollis closed his eyes and sang Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come" before talking about King.

Lollis said he had known King since the early 1980s. They attended Brainerd High School and were on the track team together, Lollis said.

King was a generous man and a good cross country runner, but he was an alcoholic, said Lollis.

Chattanooga police investigate after a man was found dead by a passing homeless person near the railroad trestle off of East 11th Ave.

Lollis said King cursed out the Community Kitchen worker who confronted him about drinking in the bathroom.

"Numerous guys come in here drunk every night, but he [King] took it beyond," said Lollis. "He used profanity. He cursed them out. That's why they told him to leave the premises."

Lollis said he doesn't hold the Community Kitchen responsible for King's death.

"I'm holding the police department responsible," he said. "If he was drunk they should have taken him to jail and let him sleep it off."

Chattanooga Police Department spokesman Kyle Miller said officers did transport one man from the Community Kitchen on Monday night. That man was taken to the Chattanooga Rescue Mission on South Holtzclaw Avenue and is still alive, Miller said.

Michael McClendon, a formerly homeless man who operates the "Whatever It Takes" ministry and serves food to the homeless on weekends, said he was upset at what happened to King.

McClendon said because so many homeless people have problems like bipolar disorder and drug addiction, accommodations should be made to keep them safe even when they are disruptive.

Sometimes people come to the shelter drunk or high on drugs, and sometimes shelter officials ban them because of their actions, but people have no place else to go, McClendon said in a phone interview.

When it's cold "and you tell a man to leave the premises," he said, "where is he going to go?"

Staff writers Ben Benton and Will Healey contributed to this story.

Contact staff writer Yolanda Putman at yputman@timesfreepress.com or call 423-757-6431.