The Final Insult: Death on Skid Row Street : Homeless: ‘Adam 94’ died in a fall during a drunken stupor. Such a demise is a tragically common occurrence.

Attendants at the city parking garage next to the Los Angeles Police Department’s downtown headquarters couldn’t really place the man: He was just one more of the transients who loiter about the grounds.

The Mexican street vendors who sell hot dogs at the crowded intersection of Temple and Los Angeles streets had equally dim recollections. He was probably another borracho , they said, a drunkard.

And so it was left Friday to hospital, police and coroner’s officials to give the man a working name: They called him “Adam 94.”

In a drunken early morning stupor, Adam 94 tumbled over a ledge and fell 14 feet, striking his head on the concrete driveway of the city garage.

For those who know that part of the city, where transients seem to dominate the landscape, the death was tragically common.

“We have so many of these pathetic deaths around here,” said Clancy Imislund, managing director of the nearby Midnight Mission. “The other day, an old man was stomped and kicked to death in front of (our office) by a younger man who wanted his blanket. It happens a lot.”

With his anonymous passing, Adam 94 will become the sole concern of an impersonal bureaucracy responsible for writing the final entry in the lives of those who who die without family or friends.

Imislund and others say two or three corpses are picked up downtown each week. Death on the street becomes even more common in the summer months, when the estimated 6,000 to 15,000 homeless men and women who live downtown forsake the relative safety of missions and shelters for the pleasant summer air and freedom of street encampments, Imislund said.

The coroner’s officer handles about 500 “John and Jane Does” each year, many of them homeless men and women who die on the streets--victims of violent confrontations, drug overdoses, hypothermia and accidents like the one that claimed Adam 94.

“Sometimes they die violent deaths; sometimes they die from the ravages of mental illness, drug and alcohol dependency,” Imislund said. “Unfortunately, there’s not a lot we can do for them because so many . . . prefer to stay out on the street.”

All but about 30 of the John and Jane Does will eventually be identified. Many will end up cremated, their ashes scattered in common graves because no one will step forward to pay burial costs.

Adam 94 was one of about a dozen men, mostly Latinos, who bed down under an olive tree in a small grassy area near Parker Center. He apparently was vomiting over a concrete ledge early Friday when he fell to the concrete ramp below.

Still alive, he crawled about 100 feet up the sloping ramp, leaving a trail of blood. He made it as far as the base of a sidewalk traffic sign on Temple Street, where an anonymous passer-by found him and called the Fire Department at 1:45 a.m. The passer-by did not stay around to answer police questions.

Paramedics took Adam 94 to County-USC Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead. A nurse there assigned the body the name “Adam 94”--the randomly picked names and numbers are easier to find in the hospital’s computer than countless “Jane and John Does.”

Hospital officials say they handle about one unidentified corpse each day.

At his street-side encampment, Adam 94 left behind few possessions and few clues to help police identify him. There were a few scattered pieces of cardboard, pages from a Spanish-language newspaper and, a police detective said, “fresh, cold beer in a paper bag.”

“All we have is that he was a Hispanic male in his 30s,” said Police Lt. Robert Kurth. “We have nothing further on his personal ID.”

Adam 94’s body lay unclaimed Friday in the county hospital’s second-floor morgue.

The corpse also was assigned a case number by the coroner’s office: 90-7126. Coroner’s deputies were to fingerprint the body sometime Friday afternoon. The prints will be checked against the records of the FBI, the Sheriff’s Department and other law enforcement agencies. If Adam 94 has an arrest record, the prints may help identify him.

Police also will check Adam 94’s physical description against missing-person reports, Lt. Kurth said. But given the fact that Adam 94 was a transient, Kurth said, it is unlikely such a report was ever filed.

An autopsy on Adam 94 will be done over the weekend, said Bob Dambacher, a spokesman for the county coroner’s office.

Coroner’s deputies will spend up to 60 days trying to identify the body, Dambacher said. If the identity of Adam 94 is still not determined, or if no friend or relative steps forward to pay for burial, the body will become one of the “indigent dead,” Dambacher said. Those bodies are cremated at a county-run mortuary in East Los Angeles. The ashes are kept for two years, after which, if no one claims them, they are placed in a common grave, Dambacher said.

It is difficult to imagine a more ignominious ending for the men and women who suffer alone on the downtown streets.

Imislund, of the Midnight Mission, said he hoped more of the homeless would seek shelter in missions, away from the uncertainties that await them on the streets in and around Skid Row. But many of those who do seek shelter have trouble finding available beds.

Leonel Salgado, a 42-year-old hot-dog vendor, sets up shop each morning on the Los Angeles Street sidewalk next to the homeless encampment where Adam 94 died. Salgado said he had often seen groups of men from the encampment walking--”always a little drunk”--toward La Placita Church, apparently seeking shelter.

The church, a few blocks away, houses 200 homeless men and women in its basement each evening, most of them recently arrived immigrants from Mexico and Central America. But church officials are forced to turn away dozens more.

“So many things are happening to the muchachos (guys) on the streets--accidents,” said Mario Rodriguez, a church social worker. “Many of them are in very difficult economic situations. All we can do is offer them a place to sleep.”

By Friday afternoon, the two Central Division detectives assigned to the case were ready to call it a day. After cleaning up at the scene of Adam 94’s death in the early morning hours, the detectives spent much of the day in the district attorney’s office filing papers on another case, a homicide.

But they planned to return to the scene of the accidental death today. Lt. Kurth was optimistic about the chances of identifying Adam 94.

“It seems like there is always someone out there who knows about him or will inquire about him,” Kurth said. “And when that happens, he will no longer have to be carried as ‘Adam 94.’ That is our goal, to make sure the family receives the remains for proper burial. . . . It’s important.”