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Homeless man warned to quit drinking
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
Before he was found face down in a puddle and dead late Wednesday night behind a downtown parking lot, friends say they urged Jim Syster to quit drinking.
As he smoked a handrolled cigarette outside the St. Vincent de Paul Society soup kitchen on Front Street, Joseph Virgil said Thursday that he had advised Syster, who was in the hospital for stomach problems, he should have stayed there.
“I told him, ‘You should have stayed in the hospital. You looked better,’” Virgil said.
Syster, 55, who was homeless, was found in a wooded area behind a parking lot on Front Street just after 10 p.m. Wednesday and was pronounced dead by paramedics.
Chief of Detectives Capt. Brad Blackburn said they are awaiting a ruling from the Mahoning County coroner to determine if Syster’s death is a homicide. Blackburn said there were no obvious signs of foul play at the place where Syster’s body was found. Reports said he had bruises on his face and a black eye, but Blackburn said witnesses told police that they had seen Syster earlier in the day, and he already had those bruises.
A spokesman for the coroner’s office Thursday said there was no information available on Syster’s case.
Virgil, who also is homeless, said he had known Syster for a year and invited him to stay with the group of homeless people who stay behind the parking lots on Front Street after he was sleeping under a tarp that was used to keep a pile of lumber dry.
Virgil said he does not know why Syster was homeless.
“He ain’t got no family,” Virgil said of Syster. “He just drank from one day to the next.”
A witness told police they had split a 40-ounce can of beer with Syster about 11 a.m. Wednesday, and when they were finished, he was going to panhandle for some beer money. Another witness said they last saw Syster about 4 p.m. Wednesday.
Syster always had a backpack with him but the backpack was gone when his body was found, reports said. A man found Syster’s body and flagged down a woman who was walking her dog; she in turn flagged down a police officer. That man told police he found Syster face down in the puddle and rolled him on his side in an attempt to revive him.
Timothy Phillips, another friend of Syster’s, said he does not know where Syster is from, but they both used to reminisce a lot because both once were long-distance truck drivers who traveled across the country.
Phillips said Syster has a daughter, but Syster had not spoken to her in more than 20 years. He said he had warned Syster about his drinking.
Records from a 2000 case in Mahoning County Area Court in Austintown, where Syster was charged with criminal trespass, show a Scranton, Pa., address for him.