Nationwide — Moneque Prepare dinner, an African American girl from Mount Clemens, Michigan, was discovered unresponsive in freezing climate behind a dumpster and later died at a close-by hospital. Authorities are investigating her dying as native outreach employees say that they had helped her simply days earlier.
Police found the 53-year-old barefoot early Thursday morning and rushed her to the hospital, the place docs pronounced her useless. The Macomb County Sheriff’s Workplace mentioned the circumstances surrounding her dying stay below investigation.
Prepare dinner was well-known to volunteers with Motor Metropolis Mitten Mission, a nonprofit that helps unhoused individuals with meals, blankets, bus passes, and shelter choices. Outreach employees had interacted along with her usually, and final noticed her a couple of week earlier than her dying, in line with WXYZ.
“Monique by no means gave us any issues or points and was simply very grateful and really appreciative for the meals that we gave and the blankets that we offer and the bus passes that we supplied,” mentioned Gail Marlow, govt director of Motor Metropolis Mitten Mission.
Marlow mentioned Prepare dinner typically stayed at a close-by park near the place she was discovered. Her dying deeply affected outreach employees who spend every day looking out throughout Macomb, Oakland, and Wayne counties for individuals sleeping outside, in vehicles, or in deserted buildings, particularly throughout excessive chilly.
With restricted funding and employees, Marlow mentioned the necessity continues to develop. “Homelessness and meals and housing insecurity is an actual problem and that each one of us are just one step away from it,” she mentioned.
Mount Clemens Metropolis Commissioner Spencer Calhoun mentioned he’s main a newly shaped process pressure centered on addressing homelessness within the metropolis. Macomb County Well being and Neighborhood Providers additionally launched a press release expressing condolences and confirming the case stays below evaluation by the Medical Examiner’s Workplace.
County officers mentioned they work year-round with group companions to attach individuals experiencing homelessness with shelter, warming facilities, and assist companies. They inspired anybody in want, or anybody involved a couple of susceptible individual, to succeed in out for assist.
