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Man wielding two machetes attacks arsonist in SLO

September 11, 2020

Jordan Smith

By CCN STAFF

A 23-year-old man allegedly attacked a 40-year-old man with two machetes Thursday afternoon at a homeless encampment in San Luis Obispo, leaving one man hospitalized with major injuries and the other in the jail, police said.

Both homeless, Jordan Smith and Mato Hayes were arguing about property at Smith’s encampment. Hayes then lit Smith’s tent on fire.

While wielding two machetes, Smith told Hayes to leave the area. Smith then slashed Hayes two to three times with the machetes, cutting Hayes’ arm and nearly severing several fingers. Smith then fled the scene.

Shortly before noon, police and firefighters arrived at the encampment, located near the Bob Jones trailhead near Prado Road. Firefighters extinguished the blaze and provided medical care to Hayes.

Officers searched for Smith, but could not find him. However, a witness told officers Smith was hiding near the creek.

Officers found Smith near the creek, but he ran away. Following a lengthy chase, officers arrested Smith for attempted murder, resisting arrest and a probation violation.

Smith was booked in the SLO County Jail with his bail set at $500,000.


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The law as it exists is so complex…is it a worse “crime” because the arsonist didint threaten his life? I believe i. Self defense but realize that common sense applies

Any info on what was “action” of error on machette man part?

I loved the absuridty of this headline though

Round of applause

Cal coast news


3

$10,000,000 for a trail unsafe for use by the public.


11

Couldda been worse- couldda been wielding THREE machetes.


6

I locally advocate for impoverished rights, but this has to be hands down one of the best comments I’ve read here in years.


0

Just an average Thursday afternoon for SLO’s best and brightest bums.


12

Confucius once stated … Don’t bring a match to a machete fight


9

We shouldn’t feel as if this is an isolated instance. Most homeless are geared and prepared to defend whatever they perceive as “theirs” and will die protecting it or forever be thought of as a punk then everyone takes from them. We’re fortunate we don’t have a murder here.


Not too sure that hanging our hat on the “mental health” issue with this one. This is how homeless bums act plain and simple. And they may well be mentally impaired but, my guess would be drugs or booze.


31

Drugs & booze are both good guesses, but they are also mental health issues, which can often respond to treatment.


3

I personally have fallen prey to the direlect community more than once…i understand your way of thinking


0

Now he gets 3 squares and a cot. We are to blame and I believe it started with the people’s kitchen at the Mission Plaza. Come one, come all and this generous place will get more. Sadly mental health is not treated, it is prolific through enabling organizations like CAPSLO, over a $100 million annual budget with six figure salaried employees? Now there is the Bob Jones Homeless Trail, with miles of defecation. So sad and it stared with a different mission. Something to think about when considering the Counties Trail Plan across your property and why people don’t want it across their property.


60

This BS started when a bunch of hand wringing do gooders moved to town, saw a couple of hobos drinking wine behind the veteran’s wall in Mitchell Park and decided we had a homeless problem. Then up popped former supervisor Kurt Kupper who had an old house on Orcutt Road that he couldn’t rent until he did some upgrades to it. Well, old Kurt offered it up for use as the first homeless shelter and he profited nicely from it.


If you build they will come.


Soon we had more bums than Kurt’s place could hold, so the county installed modular buildings on Kansas Avenue, near the jail, to accommodate the increased population. The population grew as word got out that SLO loved to hand out freebies and would feed you at “The People’s Kitchen” on the portico of the mission. Soon thereafter the Mission Plaza was so overrun with bums that parishioners had to enter through the garden entrance to attend services in the mission, lest they get rolled by the pan handlers out front.

Soon the population outgrew the modular housing units and the shelter was moved yet again, until today we have this shiny new building on Prado Road.

What amazes me is that CAPSLO has a multi million dollar budget and yet still expects the churches, private schools, etc. to provide food and to provide meal servers for all the bums who come up out of the creeks for a hot lunch. The students and parents at Mission College Prep are on the hook for this Saturday’s lunch; the bums will dine on lasagna, garden salad and French bread.


63

Well, interesting take on the situation. However, whether or not these people are accommodated, we will have homeless. It is a factor of the economy.


No, our economy is not “good”. The stock market looks good. But 50% of that is owned by the 1%. The top 10% account for 90% ownership of the market. That means that the stock market is not relevant to the actual economy, which is us. We are the economy. The People.


Before Covid19, 44% of the American public would have been unable to meet a $400 emergency. Think about that. Think what that might mean currently. How that might have affected someone you see on the street.


Studies were done in several places, including the San Francisco Bay area, where they found that almost all of the homeless people in the area were actually from that area and had been priced out of housing.


While upper echelon salaries have boomed by literally hundreds of percent (sometimes as much as 900%), the average workers’ salary has remained stagnant and those in the lower pay scales have plummeted. We now see adults attempting to live on jobs that pay minimum wage that are totally inadequate to survive. Minimum wage was what high school kids got for a summer job when I was young. I know, I had one. That standard minimum would be around $30, if it had kept up with inflation.


So, the next time you see someone who has had the bottom fall out of their life and did not handle it well, please bear at least a shred of this information in mind. It is quite possible it did not start out as a drug or alcohol problem. Right now, it is often a medical emergency that ruins people. Just a thought.


-15

This is so true “ While upper echelon salaries have boomed by literally hundreds of percent (sometimes as much as 900%), the average workers’ salary has remained stagnant and those in the lower pay scales have plummeted. ”


However, who’s in charge of the businesses in that area that continue to pay the lower wages in that area? Google? Facebook? Wells Fargo? Who else? Let’s be honest, as much as the superior liberals TALK about “livable” wages, they are the ones setting the bad wages that make it so people cant afford to live in those areas…if you aren’t making 150k+ in the Bay Area, you live in Gilroy and make that hellacious commute into the city…soooo let’s at least be honest about who runs these cities and businesses that are in that area….what’s the city pay a janitor? A secretary? Etc? Or the county? Not nearly enough….yet they are run by who? And have been run by who? And for DECADES….


Just look at what the city of slo pays? I bet you a large majority of the city/county employees don’t even live in SLO because the housing prices are so expensive…and if they are living in SLO they are probably generational SLO residents….its hard to hear about livable wages when the people in power espousing it aren’t even giving their own employees “livable” wages…but hey, you get what you pay for, probably why all these cities in the county are raising our taxes. Wages are a huge determining factor in the competency of the labor received…good people will walk away if they aren’t getting paid what they feel is their worth.


1

City salaries are very, very high – starting police at $90,000 plus mega-benefits; $1 million for three people in the legal department; six figures and Cadillac benefits for all middle and upper management. Half of the budget goes to police and fire. They don’t live in SLO, not because they can’t afford it, but they live on ranches in north county, commute to town, do their time and leave. Personally I think they should be required to live in SLO so they have more of a commitment and can be part of the community 24-7.

The homeless are here because it’s an easy place to be – good weather, tolerant cops, free food, and stupid people to give them money for booze and drugs. Meanwhile they trash our parks, trails, creeks, downtown, industrial areas, and on and on.


1

Thank you Fransesca. Sadly, your data falls on def ears, hence some of the comments here not taking in Socio Economics of the USA. As you said, this isnt the 70s where a summer job bought you Tuition at a UC or CSU, stagnation in income for the 99% of earthlings is astounding. Look at Paso, Billionaire vineyard owners paying laborers 12 dollars an hour to do Grueling work with zero benefits, we used to have a Federal Labor oversight for Ag in slo. Guess whom got tired of being fined for criminal practices, the 1%, so they lobbied politicians to remove it- Cuesta College Econ prof Rodriguez.


-7

You make good points about people being priced out of housing in this area. I would like to live in Malibu, but I cannot afford it, so I live in Cayucos. Someone who can’t afford Cayucos should probably move someplace where their is work and they can afford housing instead of expecting assistance in order to stay someplace they can’t afford. The Constitution guarantees the pursuit of happiness, not the attainment of it.


As to drug/alcohol addictions and mental health issues, I say preach it sister! The state and county has given such short shrift to funding programs to help these people it is an embarrassment.


9

“Studies were done in several places, including the San Francisco Bay area, where they found that almost all of the homeless people in the area were actually from that area and had been priced out of housing.”


This statement is completely untrue. If it was true homelessness would be easy to fix. The reason why homelessness is so pervasive is because it is a very complex problem. A large percentage of homeless are mentally ill and/or addicts and/or simply want to be homeless. How I know this is not from a study but experience. I worked in law enforcement in one of the largest cities in california and also locally. Almost all of the homeless I met in 30 years were in one of the categories I listed. Rarely did we meet the homeless person that was just down on their luck. Now they might say “I lost my job and ended up homeless”. Upon further questioning it is learned that employers apparently do not like the erratic behavior of employees with drug addiction. So yes they lost their job then ended up homeless, but, since they lost their job due to their drug usage that is the ultimate issue. And yes a lot of homeless want to be homeless, I met many homeless that said it.


19

You are right and I am one of those to be blamed. I stupidly participated in People’s Kitchen. Our group served macaroni and cheese with broccoli, tomatoes and Spanish onions. Others brought bread, milk and cookies. The schedule was top secret as the days served by the black churches brought world-class BBQ and the group did not want opportunists spiking the numbers on those days. Homelessness shortly thereafter became a for-profit business and advocacy for the far-left.


5

Heidi Harmons utopia.


Nice.


64

Quite frankly, I’m not sure how I feel about this. California is on fire and this guy stopped an arsonist. He also asked him to leave before he injured him. On the other hand (no pun intended) two machetes is a little excessive….


58

I agree with you, 805, one would be sufficient.


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