I know this thread is old, but I have some clarifications. First of all, he didn't try to kill himself with a shotgun. He had a degenerative bone disease which slowly ate away at his face. He used to wear a simple dust mask like the kind people use when working with drywall or in other dusty environments. However, once his sores got too big he didn't bother wearing any sort of protection at all. My brother-in-law knew him from high school, which is how I heard this information. Second, he apparently committed suicide by walking into the Huron river after taking a bunch of drugs (he had a heroin problem). This was in 2004 which is why nobody saw him at the time of most of the posts in this thread. Yeah, he used to beg for money with a hand written note because he couldn't really speak and depended on his ghastly visage to provoke people into giving him change just out of sheer shock. I can't imagine living like that. Definitely a sad story and one that will go down in local history as an Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti legend. Anyway, I hope I at least made his memory a little better/more accurate concerning why he had the condition he had. :/