This afternoon at about 4 p.m., I was walking by First United Church at Hastings at Gore St. A man I presumed was a drug dealer grabbed a known addict and marched her to alley behind the church.
She was yelling that it was just three dollars that she owed him, and he didn't seem to dispute that. She was yelling at people in the vicinity, "Could somebody give me three dollars!" He was holding her tightly by the arm in the alley, yelling at her, shaking her. Finally he swatted her and threw her to the ground. In the above photo, you can see her on the ground in the alley behind First United Church, as a car passes on Gore.
This woman is one of the few Asian addict-panhandlers I see on the streets. She walks through McDonalds restaurant at Terminal and Main regularly to panhandle customers. She has a sense of entitlement that leaves my jaw dropping. Once she approached a couple sitting at a table in McDonalds and asked for money. They refused and she insisted that they should give her something, "I didn't walk all the way up here for nothing!"
But I've never seen her be violent.
2 comments:
One can be abusive without being violent - but nobody should be beat.
People like to romanticize and sentimentalize the drug-addicted. That's what I would call "rich."
R.S., Joe, and all you others out there, I wish you all a Merry Christmas. Yeah, even that filthy, obnoxious drug addict in the snow. Not the drug dealer.
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