Early in the morning on Easter Sunday 2021, someone at LA’s Veterans Row called up Rob Reynolds, the camp’s main organizer, to tell him, “You need to come out here. I think someone just got killed.” That someone was a 51-year-old onetime Marine from Southern California who died at the hands of another man on Veterans Row.
This is not a whodunnit — witnesses identified a suspect who was arrested right away. And yet, there was still plenty of finger-pointing. Whose fault was it that dozens of men who served their country were allowed to live in camping tents outside the VA campus amid chaos and violence that sometimes spiraled out of control? The US government? The neighbors who tolerated them, or the ones who didn’t? Or were the veterans themselves to blame? Turns out, it’s complicated.
More:
Ep.1 Welcome to the Neighborhood
Ep. 2 How Did We Get Here?