The State - News from Dec. 7, 1988

Two priests led about 400 people in a prayer service in front of a fast-food restaurant in San Francisco where a homeless man died in the street after he had been dragged unconscious from the restaurant by a security guard who thought he was drunk. The gathering, outside a Carl’s Jr. restaurant, was in memory of Joseph Eaton, 38, a member of a prominent New England family who had fallen on hard times. Father Thomas Flower, a priest who operates a soup kitchen out of his van for the hundreds of homeless in the United Nations Plaza area of downtown San Francisco, found the body. “The time for anger is over,” Flower told the group. “It is important now for the city to be questioned about how it handles the homeless. Let the ambulances come quickly when we dial 911.”