Death Puts a Name and Past Life to a Homeless Man on Tribeca Streets

Left: The body of Chuck Daly lay beneath blankets outside Chipotle on Murray Street as detectives investigate what was then believed to be a possible crime scene. Right: Daly in 2016, from his Instagram account, posted as part of a memorial on the fence outside Target and near where he often sat. Photos: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib (detectives); Alisha Garfinkel (Daly)

In death, he was no longer another homeless man. He had a name.

“His name was Chuck Daly,” reads a cardboard sign with flowers on the sidewalk outside Chipotle on Murray Street in Tribeca, where the quiet, bearded man slept most nights for years. And where he died Sunday evening at age 43.

Nameless to most neighbors, Daly’s death soon revealed a very different past life—thanks to the makeshift memorial on Murray Street, and another across the street in front of Target, near where he often sat, silently. On a fence outside the store are photos from Daly’s better days. There a picture emerges of a talented tattoo artist who grew up in Florida and, according to an anonymous posted account, cared for his mother in Jersey City, his last address, until she died and he could no longer pay the rent. 

“We will miss you Chuck,” the note reads. “For those of you who did not get the opportunity to know Chuck Daly, he was a kind, gentle, unassuming, creative + joyful human (regardless of his circumstances).”

“We talked to him all the time. He was very gentle,” said a solemn Target employee who had arrived with flowers for the memorial. “Very nice,” added her colleague. “He never bothered anyone.”

Coming in the wake of a shooting spree of at least five homeless men—two in Soho and three in Washington D.C., that left two people dead—Daly’s death sparked an intense police investigation Sunday night, and wide media attention. It was not until Monday evening, March 14, that police officially ruled out homicide in his death. “It was in close proximity to the two shootings [in Soho] that we had, but he succumbed to other medical conditions,” NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig told reporters without elaborating.

Early Tuesday morning Washington, D.C. police tweeted that they caught the suspect they believe committed all five shootings. A $70,000 reward had been offered for tips leading to his capture and conviction.

In Soho on March 12, three days after the last Washington shooting, a homeless man was wounded in the arm at about 4:30 a.m. on King Street, near Varick. The second victim was found dead, shot in the neck and head, that afternoon around 5 p.m. at 148 Lafayette St, just north of Canal. Witnesses had reported hearing gunshots at about 6 a.m. that morning, police said.

Police had approached Daly outside the Tribeca Chipotle at 6 a.m. Sunday morning, March 13, to offer him water and warn him of the shootings, a police source said. The outreach was part of a city-wide NYPD effort to alert people living on the streets of the danger, and to offer shelter from the frigid weather. Police were also looking for other possible victims.

Early that evening, a person concerned about Daly’s condition alerted police, who found blood and what appeared to be a puncture wound to the leg, a police source said.

As dozens of cops on Sunday night gathered outside Chipotle where Daly’s body still lay, Laurence Ketchmer, 56, who lives nearby, stood and watched. He was shocked, he said, by the death of the man whose name he did not know, but who he has passed “every single day” for the 3 ½ years he’s lived in the neighborhood.

“He never said a word to anybody. Never had his hand out,” Ketchmer said. “He was the epitome of peacefulness.”