Crime & Safety

Homeless Vet Stirs Up Trouble After Digging Huge Trenches Near Onramp

Caltrans was filling in trenches that had been dug out and did some brush work, which kept traffic backed up on Hamilton Avenue this afternoon.

The Highway 17 onramp toward Santa Cruz was closed to traffic from approximately 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday. California Highway Patrol had complained to Caltrans that there was a homeless man digging deep trenches along the embankment and requested that crews work to fill in the holes.

"Apparently, there's some guy living in there from a recon unit back in his military days, and he wanted to trench holes there," says Caltrans District 4 Public Information Officer Bernie Walik. "They were pretty deep, and he was causing a little bit of destruction on that hill. We were there filling them in and leveling things out."

The holes were big enough for someone to crawl into, and there was concern over erosion and further tunneling, Walik said.

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"Essentially, it sounds like it’s been going on for a couple of months," he said. "Now, things have kind of degraded, and the holes are beginning to become so extreme we were called in. There was enough dirt removed that we had to bring dirt in.

"Depending on how far the tunneling continued, it could have undermined the integrity of the embankment or even the underpass," he said.

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