57°
A concerned friend who hadn’t seen him went to check the Palisade Avenue building near the Fairview border where Jorge Adalberto Roca had been staying with nearly a dozen other squatters, authorities said.
Like him, Roca’s wife had suffered from severe alcoholism Roca’s wife, Virginia, died from alcoholism three months ago. Their children were placed with a caretaker in Fairview.
That left Roca – an undocumented immigrant from the town of San Martín Jilotepeque – with no relatives in the area, friends said.
Roca’s elderly father in Guatemala is sick and needs money for medications, they said, adding that the expense of sending the body of his only son home is “very high.”
Like him, Roca’s wife had suffered from severe alcoholism before dying three months ago. State child welfare authorities granted custody of their children to a Fairview caretaker.
A friend who hadn’t seen him since Saturday went to the apartments above a vacant storefront late Wednesday morning and found his body.
The friend flagged down a Fairview police officer a few blocks away and told him, Capano said.
Four other squatters in the apartments were so heavily intoxicated that they had to be hospitalized, they said.
Two had been sleeping next to Roca and weren’t aware that he’d died.
The building was immediately boarded up and red-tagged by the borough.
It came a week after a DPW crew in Palisades Park found the body of a 35-year-old homeless who’d frozen to death in a municipal parking garage.
SEE: Homeless Man Found Frozen To Death In Palisades Park Garage, Companion Hospitalized
Click here to follow Daily Voice Saddle Brook-Elmwood Park and receive free news updates.
