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Syracuse, N.Y. – Jeremy Dufresne sleeps most of the night and has most of his meals at the Samaritan Center, north of Salina Street.
In the meantime, he sometimes stops in the Dunkin ', in North Salina Street. He warms up and charges his phone.
That's what he was doing on Sunday night: charge his phone so that he could call his mother to say good night, as he does every night. He lowered his head for a minute, he said.
Then a worker threw water on his head.
"He probably had personal problems and needed to talk to someone," said Dufresne about the worker. "And he's caught up with someone else, like me."
The worker laughed at him while someone else took a video. The video was posted on Facebook almost instantly. But the intention to make fun of the homeless man was returned against the people who created it.
Supporters of the homeless have called for a boycott of the Dunkin store and people are calling for the worker's dismissal on social media. Neither Dunkin & # 39; nor the owner of the franchise, The Wolak Group, responded to requests for comment.
Al-Amin Muhammad, who runs the Homelessness Campaign "We're Raising Above the Street", went to Dunkin this morning to confront the director. He also led a protest of about 20 people around lunch time.
Shortly after, the queue was safe when people ordered their coffee. Two people inside said they belonged to the Wolak group, but sent the questions back to Dunkin & # 39; s company. Neither answered the questions as to whether the worker is still employed.
Dufresne said he was surprised that the worker had thrown water at him.
"I grabbed my things and left," he said.
He said that other workers there had been kind to him, giving him food or drink. They asked him not to disturb anyone and he replied in the negative.
When the video was taken, there seemed to be no one else in the restaurant. It was around 8:30 pm Dufresne said that he was not sleeping. He just bowed his head to wait for the phone to charge.
Dufresne lives outside because he prefers it, he said. Her aunt, Betty Jo Craven, and her mother, Bobbie Jo Richardson, both said that they had tried to help her.
This afternoon he was at his aunt's in Syracuse.
Dufresne suffers from schizophrenia, he said with his family. Its fight against mental illness is not uncommon in a homeless person. National data show that about one-third of homeless people suffer from some form of mental illness.
Dufrense said that he did not want to live inside. He likes to be alone.
"The only time I talk to people is when I talk to my family," he said.
His mother said that oxygen was cut off from Dufresne's brain when he was born, leaving him struggling with physical and mental difficulties. He suffers from epilepsy and a learning disability in addition to schizophrenia, she said.
When Dufresne was 2 years old, his father had a motorcycle accident that left him in a coma for 12 years. Dufrense was 14 when her father died at Rosewood Nursing Home, said her aunt.
He wanted to be an artist when he grew up.
"I like conceptual art, landscapes," he said. He preferred the pencil to ink or paint.
But he abandoned that dream.
Dufresne dropped out of high school and had trouble staying off the street ever since, he said.
He was bullied and was taken back to school, said his aunt.
His mother said that she had tried to bring him in. She took a job out of town about a year ago. When she learned that her son was sleeping on the steps of a church, she begged him to stay with her.
He did it for a few weeks, but wanted to return to Syracuse and the streets, she said.
Dufresne says that he prefers to just be outside.
"I look forward to the afternoon, when it will be hot," he said.
He intends to sleep outside again tonight.
Marnie Eisenstadt is a corporate journalist who writes about people, life and culture in central New York. Do you have an idea or a question? Contact her at any time: email | twitter | Facebook | 315-470-2246
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