Courtesy Photograph / Deceleration
Jessica Witzel, proper, along with her sister Jemmy Coleman.
Initially revealed by Deceleration, a nonprofit on-line journal producing authentic information and evaluation responding to our shared ecological, political, and cultural crises.
Editor’s Be aware: On Thursday, August 22, 2024, a 46-year-old girl died on a sidewalk within the 5 Factors space of San Antonio within the midst of a brutal warmth wave—an obvious sufferer of the day’s excessive temperatures. Whereas the official excessive that day reached 106° Fahrenheit, these temps are taken on the northside at San Antonio Worldwide Airport. On account of inequitable growth patterns in city areas and many heat-absorbing asphalt and concrete, temps throughout many extra central neighborhoods are often a lot larger than what’s recorded there (see: “San Antonio’s Hottest Neighborhoods“). For instance, Deceleration recorded warmth index temps as excessive as 130° the day earlier than within the downtown space. Although nonetheless not publicly recognized, a member of the family confirmed to Deceleration that the lady was Jessica Witzel. Deceleration’s Marisol Cortez had been supporting efforts to get Witzel, a household buddy, off the streets and into medical care and secure housing. As Cortez writes right here: Witzel’s demise, very like that of Albert Garcia final summer season, follows a sample of lethally sluggish response time by native officers to the intertwined crises of local weather, housing, and well being care entry for individuals with psychiatric and different kinds of incapacity. — Greg Harman
Jessica Witzel was already at Bulverde Elementary after I arrived in 2nd grade, a brand new child from San Antonio in a weird middle-of-nowhere rural panorama.
Jessica performed flute in center college band with me. She wore layers of black and purple lace and Wiccan necklaces and painted her fingernails black. She wore black T-shirts with the names of other bands on them: The Remedy, Skinny Pet. She was older and wiser, intimidatingly cool. She’d seen Morrissey reside. What had he gave the impression of? I needed to know. I used to be impressed.
His singing was impeccable, she mentioned. He hit each notice pitch excellent. Sounded identical to his albums.
Jessica was a yr forward of me in highschool. We had been by no means shut pals, however she frolicked with youngsters I frolicked with: the bizarre youngsters, the band youngsters, the artwork youngsters, the sensible however troubled youngsters. She lived in a trailer along with her youthful sister Jemmy subsequent door to one in every of my greatest pals in highschool, a tall child named Chris with a bowl haircut and preternatural inventive skill. It was Chris who launched me to the child who a lot later would grow to be my older son’s dad, then my ex. However earlier than that Jessica was Miguel’s old flame, his first actual girlfriend.
Later, we lived above Jessica in a rented fourplex on East Courtland, throughout from San Antonio Faculty, the place I moved proper after faculty. She labored as an unique dancer, which had intrigued me sufficient to interview her for a feminist idea class. She had unique pets. A ferret, a parrot. Her residence was cluttered and filled with stuff, an early signal of the hoarding struggles she would later develop.
Jessica was married, briefly, to a man who was half Mexican and half white like us. I bear in mind seeing their wedding ceremony picture, Jess in a protracted purple velvet gown holding her pregnant stomach like she would a globe, with glitter on her eyelids and shoulder-length bob dyed pink. She appeared lovely.
Jessica lived in several residence complexes round city after she moved out of the fourplex, and typically we’d go to her. She spoke too quick and infrequently a lot it was exhausting to get a phrase in edgewise. She mentioned she had been recognized bipolar, that she was taking treatment.
Courtesy Photograph / Deceleration
Jessica Witzel in 2020 along with her niece, Jemmy’s daughter, earlier than she grew to become unhoused.
Jessica wasn’t married lengthy, however from that marriage she had one son, Antares—named for the brightest star within the constellation Scorpius, spoken with the Spanish pronunciation. As soon as we visited from California and frolicked with Jess and one other highschool buddy. Antares was about 18 months then, shy and candy. I had by no means been round infants a lot as an grownup and was enraptured with him. I adopted him round and across the restaurant as he explored, feeling for the primary time like I might think about having a toddler of my very own.
After we moved again to San Antonio from Kansas, Jessica was residing on Blanco with Antares, then seven or eight, in a small two-bedroom duplex simply south of Hildebrand, close to the site visitors circle. On returning to Texas, my ex moved in with Jessica briefly whereas he appeared for his personal place, and when our four-year-old was together with his dad, he’d stick with Jessica and Antares too. The duplex was small and crowded with stuff, like her different locations had been, however the youngsters appeared completely happy. I bear in mind going over and watching them play with a litter of kittens they’d named issues like Black Shadow and Orange Ninja. Jessica’s son had a online game the place you positioned collectible figurines from The Final Airbender on prime of the console and the characters would seem on display screen.
Ultimately my ex discovered his personal place, however Jessica remained a household buddy till the top of her life—a sister to my ex, an aunt or godmother to my youngster. I used to be by no means as near Jessica as they had been, however I’d gone to highschool along with her, I’d grown up along with her.
Jessica died on the road within the warmth on August 22, 2024. She’d been homeless for greater than a yr by that time, after dropping the duplex on Blanco the place she’d lived for years. She hadn’t been capable of maintain on to housing: she’d developed schizophrenia and had began lighting fires inside the home.
After I heard from my ex that she was on the streets, I requested him to attach me with Jess’s sister Jemmy. Perhaps she knew the place Jessica was. And if we might discover her, perhaps we might assist.
So I reached out to Jemmy, hoping that what I’d realized from different mutual help work I’d completed with unhoused of us might probably assist Jessica too. Jemmy responded immediately: Jessica was in Bexar County Jail, she mentioned, the place a minimum of she was alive and off the streets and consuming. However Jemmy was in hell, she mentioned. For a yr she had been calling and writing what felt like tons of of individuals attempting to get assist for her sister—psychological well being providers, shelters, attorneys, probate court docket, Grownup Protecting Companies, 211, hospitals, jails, police. All to no avail.
She despatched me pages and pages of paperwork, emails she had despatched to county officers, jail officers, police. She despatched me footage of what Jessica had appeared like earlier than she grew to become unhoused, after six months on the streets, one other picture simply earlier than she was jailed in June. She’d dropped fifty kilos, Jemmy advised me. She’d been raped on the streets, beat up, hit by vehicles.
The evening Jessica was final arrested and jailed, she confirmed up at her outdated home insisting she owned it, that her mother, very a lot nonetheless alive, had died and given it to her. She threw garments over the fence, pulled the fence all the way down to enter the yard, collected issues off neighbors’ porches and put them right into a curler dumpster, took a hose and watered the neighbors’ homes. The neighbors known as SAPD on her for trespassing and property harm, however to me one thing about these actions, distorted as they had been via the filter of psychosis, carried inside them some hint of the extraordinary and home. It actually was her home, on some stage. On some stage, she was simply attempting to go house.
Jemmy despatched me Jessica’s rap sheet, the lengthy record of prior fees that had accrued within the time she’d been on the streets: sitting down in a proper of manner, tenting in a public place, smoking open air the place prohibited, littering. Studying them over, my coronary heart sunk. These weren’t crimes, not likely. They had been crimes like Jean Valjean stealing a goddamn loaf of bread to feed his ravenous household. Jessica wasn’t hurting anybody.
Jessica was in poor health. She wanted fast rehousing, meals, the proper of medical care in order that she might stabilize sufficient maintain that housing. And no one in any of the town or county businesses her sister emailed and known as for greater than a yr appeared to actually give a fuck. Whereas held in Bexar County, Jessica was imagined to have a psychiatric analysis previous to her launch again to the streets, which might have hastened her being deemed incapacitated and certified her for guardianship, however it by no means occurred. Jemmy known as and known as the court docket appointed lawyer to observe up on this, however he by no means known as again, she advised me.
Courtesy Photograph / Decelaration
Fundraiser created for Witzel that launched within the days earlier than her demise.
I’d reached out to Jemmy after I heard that Jessica was on the streets, as a result of for a short whereas we’d had some success getting our neighbor Albert Garcia housed. He’d misplaced his toes and a part of one leg residing unsheltered throughout Winter Storm Uri, and he would ultimately die beneath a freeway overpass in our neighborhood round this time final yr, throughout an analogous weeks-long stretch of triple-digit days. However for a time, neighbors and radical road medics, working along with decided individuals on the within of institutional energy, received a double amputee with a lifetime of heroin use off the road and sober for 18 months.
So I reached out to Jemmy. As with Albert, we began the method of making use of for the Bexar County guardianship program that had saved Albert’s life for a time. I reached out to constituent providers for District 5, the place the jail was situated, and later District 1, the place Jessica frolicked after launch from jail, to request a gathering to debate an emergency plan of motion for connecting Jessica to assets and providers. I reached out to mutual help teams within the hopes road medics might set up common check-ins with Jessica till guardianship got here via. I attempted connecting Jemmy with NAMI household assist teams. We put collectively a direct help request to boost funds.
Ultimately, after a number of weeks of e mail observe up, District 5 politely declined to convene a gathering. There wasn’t actually something they may do, they mentioned. Actually it was on the County, they mentioned, placing us in contact with Decide Oscar J. Kazen, who presides over Bexar County’s psychological well being court docket. I knew Kazen—he’d helped us with Albert, and he’d known as us together with his condolences when he heard Albert had died.
On the cellphone, Kazen was type. He advised us he would do what he might however that we wanted to be practical. It was there have been public hospitals the place unhoused individuals with critical psychological sickness might go to stabilize and rehabilitate, however these days had been lengthy gone. The one factor left was contract beds and voluntary care—of little assist for individuals with schizophrenia, who often lack perception into their very own situation and refuse remedy. For those who actually wish to assist, he laughed wryly, inform the Metropolis and County to construct me an actual psychiatric hospital.
Nonetheless, inside a pair days of our dialog, Kazen’s workplace emailed Jemmy a authorized doc stating that Jessica had been assigned a guardian advert litem to signify her in court docket. Her case was shifting. And for a pair days, we had been hopeful.
Then the warmth dome hit. And as with Albert when he returned to the streets final yr right now, the Metropolis and County moved too slowly for the tempo and scale of the disaster we’re residing.
I received the decision yesterday. Between choking sobs, Jemmy learn me what the information had reported about her sister, our buddy. The day earlier than, a 46-year-old girl, presumed to be unhoused, had been discovered unresponsive on a sidewalk within the 5 Factors neighborhood. Jemmy’s mom later confirmed with native authorities that the lady within the information stories was her daughter, Jessica Jill Witzel.
Local weather Central
Left unreported in all accounts of Witzel’s demise to date: Local weather change, fueled by fossil fuels, is driving the intense warmth that killed Jessica.
Preliminary stories of Jessica’s demise state she died of pure causes ensuing from heat-related sickness. She died of what now? That’s like saying somebody who lived beneath the levees and drowned throughout Hurricane Katrina died of pure causes.
The day earlier than Jessica died, Deceleration’s warmth monitoring downtown confirmed the warmth index hitting a excessive of 130 levels. Based on Local weather Central’s Local weather Shift Index, this stage of warmth was made 5 occasions extra possible due to anthropogenic local weather change—that means, primarily, this specific warmth occasion was unattainable however for the burning of fossil fuels and eradication of world forests that function carbon sinks. Extra merely said, local weather change is driving the intense warmth that killed Jessica. Local weather change pulled the set off. However institutional abandonment of the unhoused and disabled loaded the gun.
So no, it’s not underlying situations that specify why somebody like Jessica died within the warmth, as some media stories of her demise have steered—even when this emerges later as an element as an official reason for demise is decided. It’s not the improper sort of paving materials, as steered in a KENS5 information story. Sure, how we construct our cities matter. Which neighborhoods have entry to shade and water issues. However massive image: It’s local weather change. It’s deep histories of inequality. It’s systemic neglect of essentially the most susceptible.
We did this, in different phrases. We’re doing this. However guess what? Meaning it may be completely different. Meaning it should be completely different.
Marisol Cortez is Co-Editor of Deceleration. As a author and community-based scholar, her work is grounded in Chicanx and decolonial actions for justice and earth safety in South Texas. Starting her political life as a poet, she later participated in grassroots campaigns for environmental justice in San Antonio, which impressed her doctoral analysis on the College of California at Davis. After graduating along with her Ph.D. in Cultural Research, she has walked between tutorial, activist, and inventive worlds in an effort to make the labor of considering and writing helpful to on-the-ground struggles in her house neighborhood of San Antonio, Tejas. She is creator of the award-winning cli-fi novel Luz at Midnight (FlowerSong Press 2020) and I Name on the Earth, a chapbook of documentary poetry in regards to the displacement of Mission Trails Cell Residence Group.
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