By Melissa Wagoner
When Jenna Keeton received a phone call from her mother alerting her that her father had died, she wasn’t surprised.
“I had been preparing myself for his death for years,” Jenna admitted. “But I was expecting a heart attack or an overdose.”
Instead, Jenna learned that her father, Joe Keeton – a man who had struggled with mental health issues, drug addiction and houselessness in Silverton for many years – had been fatally mauled by three pit bulls in an area outside Bend known as “Dirt World.”
“I’ve never felt grief on that level,” Jenna said. Acknowledging that, while her relationship with her father had been a difficult one, the finality of his death was still devastating.
“My dad was incredibly intelligent, hyper intelligent, and a real dude. He was a youth pastor in the ’90s,” Jenna said, describing her father’s early life before a back injury and a subsequent prescription for opioids reignited an addiction he had fought hard to leave behind. “When people give in to their addiction, that demon is powerful. And without proper support and love, to beat it is damn near impossible.”
It’s a struggle Jenna knows all too well.
“I’ve been fighting addiction since I was 12,” she said. “And I have won battles and lost battles… it takes a village. But when you don’t have one, you do what you’ve got to do.”
For Joe that meant living on the streets of Silverton, where he often utilized the services of Sheltering Silverton.
“Like the rest of Joe’s friends and family, I am still grieving his death and the particular horror of what he experienced in his last hours and minutes…” Sheltering Silverton’s founder and Executive Director Sarah White said. “My primary frustrations are with the many systems that failed Joe during his life, my own inability to get him into stable housing with the support he deserved, and the loss of all of Joe’s talent and energy.”
Because, while Joe’s mental illness and addiction to drugs were often severe, those who cared for him continued to hope that he would eventually receive the help he needed.
“He was once a very attractive, intelligent, passionate, kind man,” Joe’s oldest daughter, Kansas, said. “We loved him deeply.”
But that love did not mean she or her sisters were equipped to take care of their father.
“My dad left us when I was 12 years old,” she said, “so there was certainly nothing I could do about it, and I wouldn’t have even if I could, because that was never my responsibility.”
In the end, both daughters had a complicated relationship with their father, despite continued estrangement.
“It’s frustrating the ways my dad was failed by his family and the system,” Jenna said, describing the feeling that she could have, and should have, done more to help her father. “I’m an adult now and he needed me… I have to deal with that.”
“It leaves an acrid taste in my mouth that I’ll never hear his voice again,” Kansas echoed, “or look into his eyes that so starkly resemble my own. It hurts something fierce.”
And the pain hasn’t decreased, even with the arrest and eventual sentencing of the person found responsible for Joe’s death, owner of the three dogs, Jessica Rae McCleery.
“I am happy that someone was held accountable, and I’m very happy that a precedent has been set around maintaining dangerous animals,” Kansas said, recalling her reaction to the three-year prison sentence McCleery received. “I’m also relieved that the state was so quick to prosecute over the death of a homeless man, something I wasn’t sure would be a very high priority. The other positive is that the outcome establishes that even seemingly lawless encampments like Dirt World have legal boundaries.”
And yet, McCleery’s prosecution does not erase Joe’s death.
“Does it change what happened? Of course not,” Kansas said. But she is hopeful that the ruling may prevent a comparable situation from happening in the future.
“Not only was she maintaining very dangerous dogs, she was proud of them, and she let them wander around to hunt victims like my dad,” Kansas said. Admitting, “I had greatly hoped that she would be held accountable for being so grossly unconcerned about the safety of others.”
And yet Kansas – who has struggled with her own addiction at times – is not without empathy for McCleery, a woman whose story reminds her of Joe’s.
“[I]t gives me no pleasure to put a woman away for three years,” she said. “I am sure that part of the reason for her negligence was her substance abuse issues, and I have compassion for that. I hope she does a great deal of self-reflection while she serves her time.”
Similarly, John Friedrick – who befriended Joe during his time in Silverton and has since followed McCleery’s trial – said, “[I] hope that Jessica McCleery gets to experience a better and safer life in the future, one where her needs are met and our society refuses to abandon her or anyone else. As an unhoused person, her life is already much harder than most of us can imagine. If she had been safely housed perhaps Joe would still be with us.”
But the fact remains that Joe is gone and those who cared for him will never know how his life might have ended.
“I don’t know that he ever would have turned his life around,” Kansas admitted, “but I do know that now he’ll never have the chance.”
