After being shot at Moccasin Flats in the summer of 2021, Danielle Willier, who now resides at the encampment at Millennium Park, said she won’t be going back to Moccasin Flats.
City council has approved a proposal to remove the Millennium Park encampment and return the site to its previous condition.
“It’s just more trauma after a life of endless trauma,” Danielle said, standing outside her tent at the encampment at the corner of First Avenue and George Street Thursday morning. Danielle has come together with five other people who share the same area with several tents very close together and partitioned off with some scrap plywood.
At Moccasin Flats, Danielle said she just never felt safe.
“I was washing my laundry at the back of my tent and some guy came down the hill and started taking pictures of me,” Danielle recalled. “It was just really creepy. We had someone sneaking around at night stealing the ladies’ underwear and we’d have people driving through there mocking us. It’s not like we chose this life. I used to be a cook for 15 years.”
And when she is asked to move from the Millennium Park encampment?
“There’s going to be a lot of PTSD,” Danielle said.
“At Moccasin Flats it’s not safe. They turned off all the street lights there and it’s dangerous. Down here we have access to water, we can use the washrooms at the shelters and it’s safe here.”
