RICHMOND
- Anthony Lucero lived nowhere. And that is where he died,
spectacularly, on a bitter November night.
Motorists crossing beneath Interstate 80 on Central Avenue began
calling for help at 8:07 p.m., some reporting smoke, others spotting the
figure wreathed in flames.
Firefighters found him face-down beside the exit ramp at 8:11 p.m.,
in a weed patch. He lay at the fire's edge, head scorched past
recognition, but backside no worse for wear, bottle-shards and garbage
framing his curled body.
Two months later, authorities say this 54-year-old homeless man,
already drunk to oblivion, suffocated on smoke from the fire. They also
say a crime did not occur -- probably. But for those who loved him, the
question remains.
What on earth happened to Tony? The Richmond Fire Department never
investigated.
"There's a reasonable expectation that the fire department would try
to determine how the fire started," said Arlene Diaz, Lucero's ex-wife.
"If it had been any other death, any other person, they would have. But
he was homeless ... they don't realize people loved Tony."
Richmond Fire Department records show the incident coded as a "grass
fire." The department made no formal record of the Nov. 30 fatality and
did not conduct any investigation after knocking down the flames,
records show.
Without knowing how the fire started or what was used to set it,
authorities admit they will never know with certainty whether or not
Lucero was the victim of a crime.
"We have a procedure, and the commanding officer followed that
procedure," said Richmond Fire Marshall Don Perez. "It's up to the
captain on scene to make decisions about what resources he requires, and
he made a decision. We can speculate about whether he made the right
decision, but he made it based on his experience and what he saw at the
scene that night."
That explanation doesn't sit well with Lucero's family, friends or
even strangers in this south Richmond neighborhood.
"The deputy coroner told me ... at first (firefighters) thought it
was a log on fire. When they tried to put it out, they found out it
wasn't a log. It was a human being. It was my brother," Lake County
resident Emily Newfield said. "They didn't know that people loved him."
• • •
Two teams of homicide detectives spent hours beneath the freeway,
combing the dirt for bits of detritus that might suggest what happened.
They later interviewed all who dialed 911 about the fire and talked to
the local homeless people.
They learned that Lucero frequented the popular panhandling spot
beside the overpass. But nobody saw him for several hours before the
fire, police Sgt. Allwyn Brown said, and nobody saw how it started.
Investigators arriving after the fire found a 14-foot burn scar
behind a fence immediately east of the Central Avenue exit ramp. Local
homeless people often panhandle on the shoulder. Don Carr, a homeless
friend of Lucero, may have been the last person to see him alive.
"He was drunk as hell," said Don Carr a homeless friend of Lucero. "I
watched him drink a bottle of whiskey and a (40-ounce malt liquor), and
that's just while I was here."
Carr's eyes rarely left the line of cars waiting for a green light at
the bottom of the freeway exit as he spoke Friday afternoon. He stood
beside a cyclone fence running beneath the freeway, separating the
sidewalk from the dirt slope leading up to the underbelly of Interstate
80.
Just inside the fence, a blackened patch of earth marks the place
where Carr's friend died horribly two months ago.
Firefighters found Lucero face-down inside the fenced area, in the
thicket of weeds and junk where Carr says Lucero kept his sleeping bags
and other property. Police found a cushion and other bedding material,
along with liquor bottles, cigarettes and matches.
"Looking at the scene, it appears likely that the victim was under a
blanket, he had it over his head. It was cold that night," Brown said.
Carr, who now spends his days holding a sign advertising his need for
laundry, food, propane and money, says he and Lucero were friends for
more than a decade, from a time when both had jobs and homes. Last fall,
both found themselves panhandling at the same freeway exit.
Carr said he left a very intoxicated Lucero about 5:30 p.m. the night
he died.
"He never had a lighter, he always used matches. He had about five
sleeping bags right out in the open (where the fire started)," Carr
said. "I bet he had all those sleeping bags over his head when he lit a
match."
An autopsy showed that Lucero died of smoke inhalation, meaning he
was alive when the fire started, coroner's Deputy Leo Martin said.
Other than the fire damage, the only remarkable finding from the
autopsy was Lucero's .28 blood-alcohol level, more than three times the
legal driving limit and high enough to incapacitate all but hardened
alcoholics.
Martin pictures Lucero inebriated to the edge of consciousness and
huddled beneath a blanket, trying to light a cigarette without much
coordination or awareness to extinguish it himself if a spark lit his
blanket.
Police did find traces of bedding around Lucero's upper body. But
police detectives are not qualified to investigate the cause of a fire.
Brown said he was surprised to learn that a fire department
investigation report would not accompany his own agency's report.
"We rely on the fire report to definitively determine the cause of
the fire for our cause-of-death investigation," Brown said. "We do not
have the expertise or training to determine the cause of a fire."
• • •
Newfield had a heart attack shortly after learning of her brother's
death. A few weeks later she received the box that contained his ashes.
It sat atop her television in Cobb, Calif., through the holidays.
It's finally gone. They buried him last weekend in their hometown of
Clifton, Ariz. "We wanted to bury him on his birthday," Newfield said.
Like Diaz, Newfield remains deeply suspicious of Lucero's death. The
official explanation seems contrived to them, and the fire far from
natural.
"I don't think it was an accident," Newfield said. "Even if he had a
blanket over him, still. Not all of his body was burned, but his head
was completely charred? It doesn't make sense."
She fears he fell victim to a robbery. She notes that police did not
find personal effects that Lucero always carried with him.
"He received a St. Christopher's medal at his first communion,"
Newfield said. "He told me he always held it every night and said his
prayer. He lost his teeth twice and his glasses umpteen times, but he
never lost his St. Christopher's medal."
Police found no medal at the scene.
After bouncing between Arizona and California for a few years, Lucero
and his wife landed near Hilltop Mall in the mid-1990s. Tony worked as a
postal clerk, at one point as a supervisor, at Richmond's bulk mailing
plant.
"He was a good guy. He was private, a quiet guy. He could be arrogant
in his ways, but he lived by a code of honor with himself and his
family," Diaz said. "He was a good husband and father when he was not
drinking."
But the good times vanished down the neck of a bottle. Lucero began
drinking heavily. Diaz developed a drug problem. Eventually, Diaz said,
she knew she must leave. So she took their daughter, Andrea, back to
Arizona in 1997.
Diaz is now sober. Lucero didn't get on well by himself.
"My daughter would hear from him. He would call and cry to her. I
told him ... I didn't appreciate that, she didn't need to be hearing any
of that. He would tell her how he would fall asleep in the bushes,
crying," Diaz said, estimating the family last heard from Lucero in
2003.
Andrea is now 15. She last saw her father three years ago.
She is trying to accept that, in the absence of contrary evidence,
the authorities consider her father's death accidental.
But in the absence of contrary evidence, Lucero's family will always
wonder what happened to him.
"I have a feeling that somehow, the answers will come to me,"
Newfield said. "Somebody ... somehow the answers will be given to me by
somebody."
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