Vallejo city officials and police said Tuesday the cause of death for a man found at an illegal dumping site late in 2024 was accidental.
A City of Vallejo public works crew, performing a cleanup near the 2300 block of Broadway St. on Dec. 24, encountered 58-year-old American Canyon resident James Oakley II, who had been fatally injured. It was later discovered Oakley had been compressed within the debris.
A Vallejo Police Department investigation into Oakley’s death determined there was no indication of any person having an intent to cause harm, bodily injury, or death.
A Solano County Coroner’s Office autopsy determined the cause of death to be blunt force injuries. The coroner’s office doesn’t deal with a possible criminal element of the death, only the cause.
The Solano County District Attorney’s Office on Tuesday said there was insufficient evidence to file criminal charges.
“The City sends its deepest condolences to the family of the deceased person,” Vallejo City Manager Andrew Murray said in a news release on Tuesday. “This was a tragic incident.”
Despite the news from the city, some unsheltered advocate groups like Low-Income Residents of Vallejo demanded an immediate moratorium on all encampment sweeps and cleanups until a full review of relevant policies, procedures, and oversight is conducted.
“We can’t allow another situation like this to ever happen again, and the general public — which includes our unhoused residents — deserves transparency,” the group stated.
The group said it has tried to reach out to Murray earlier this week, but has yet to receive a response.
“As we’ve stated many times, our ultimate goal is to have a collaborative relationship with the City, but we can’t do that without being met halfway,” the group stated.
The death comes about eight months after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that cities are free to clear homeless encampments even when those living on the street have nowhere else to go.
Vallejo is still currently working on a Navigation Center and the Broadway Project, which have been met with delays for years. The Broadway Project is currently over 85 percent complete. According to Murray’s message in Vallejo Weekly this week, the city manager stated that the final certificate of occupancy will likely be in May, with full occupancy of residents by August.
Since 2018, lower court rulings had prevented local governments in California and throughout the West from arresting or fining people for sleeping on public property if beds weren’t available in homeless shelters. When cities moved to shut down an encampment, they were generally expected to offer everyone living there shelter or housing. But few cities had the resources to move all their unhoused residents indoors.