A homeless woman was found dead on the sidewalk under the scaffolding outside St. Brigid's Church in the East Village yesterday morning. A friend of the woman told the NY Times, "She was a very beautiful person, and she had a beautiful heart." EV Grieve walked by the scene last night and found that someone lit a candle in her memory.
The woman's friend, who said his name was Tony and that her name was Grace, told the Times that around 9 p.m. "he wrapped Grace in three wool blankets and then left to panhandle on East Ninth Street." He returned at midnight—Grace seemed "warm"— but found there wasn't enough room for him to sleep there, too. "Instead, he said, he slept for a few hours at the Bowery Mission, where women were not permitted to spend the night. He returned to the church Sunday morning, he said, only to find that Grace would not wake up." Tony called 911 one and was told by EMTs that she was dead, "I just broke out crying. The tears wouldn’t stop."
Residents told 1010 WINS, "It’s kind of hard for Americans to be living in the streets and they don’t have a place for these homeless to move in especially when it’s under 20 degrees, it’s very sad, because the girl was young," and "The cops are always travelling around they must have seen her, nobody picked her up." Grace was apparently in her 30s and her death is not considered suspicious.
