OHMIDOG! : Homeless man found dead, dog by his side

A homeless man who lived with his two dogs at a Los Angeles area*truck yard was found shot four times in the head Tuesday, his dog Spike standing vigil over his lifeless body.
L.A. County sheriff’s officials said the 49-year-old man’s body was found in an alley shortly after people nearby heard a series of gunshots.*The victim has been identified — through fingerprints on file from numerous arrests — but police were not releasing his name until relatives were notified.
Truckers had accepted the man and his dogs at the truck yard in Commerce, frequently buying tacos for him and his dogs from a lunch truck, and a security guard bought him an old van to sleep in, according to an article in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times.
They marveled at the affection he showed for his dogs, the article said, bathing them*with a hose that a security guard let him use, and grieving when one of them, Chaparra, was killed a few months ago by a car.
“He used to say that his salvation would be his little dogs,” said trucker Jose Sosa, 53, who placed three votive candles on the asphalt where the victim fell.
A Mexican immigrant, the man was known only by his nicknames. Some people knew him as “Chilango,” a slang term for someone from Mexico City. Truckers and nearby business owners said they had heard that the man once*owned a video store on Olympic Boulevard but that he went broke and ended up on the streets, taking in stray dogs.
“He loved those dogs. I’d tell him let’s go eat, and we’d go to the lunch truck and he would say, ‘I want this and my dogs want this,’ ” another trucker recalled.


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