One death every eight days.

Santa Barbara’s death toll for its homeless residents has reached that number in just four months in 2009. The 15th and most recent death of a homeless person was reported Saturday evening, after Santa Barbara police officers and paramedics responded to a call from an Amtrak employee about a man down near the train station platform.

While police do not believe the latest death is suspicious, an advocate for the homeless and a former district attorney have urged the Santa Barbara coroner to perform an autopsy on the latest victim.

The man was using a wheelchair at the time of his death because he was waiting for his prosthetic leg to be repaired. The victim was found in the bushes on the ground near his wheelchair with all of his possessions nearby, police said.

Rescue personnel began chest compressions on the man and transported him to Santa Barbarba Cottage Hospital, where he was put on life support, police said. He died two days later.

County social worker Ken Williams identified the victim as Allen McGivens, saying he knew him well, and learned of his death on Monday morning.

“This broke my heart when I heard this,” he said. “He was such a nice guy.”

Williams said that police told him McGivens suffered two separate head injuries, one at the front and one toward the back of his skull. Williams said McGivens had struggled with alcohol, as do many of the area’s homeless, and said that while his death could have been an accident, it was doubtful. He said the case had too many “questionable circumstances.”

“How do you fall from a wheelchair and hit your head in two different places?” he asked. “If this keeps up, there will be 45 deaths by the end of this year.”

McGivens had been in town for only about six months, according to Williams.

Soon after Williams learned of McGivens’ death, he called his friend Joe Allen, a former district attorney who has seen many autopsy reports and now runs his own practice in Santa Barbara. Allen called the county coroner to request that an autopsy on McGivens be completed.

“It seems like an unusually high level of deaths, even just by natural processes,” Allen said. “I don’t think this is just random violence. It’s beginning to suggest to me that somebody or some group is taking out their frustration on homeless people.”

The homeless are a vulnerable population because many suffer from mental illness or substance abuse, Allen said, and added that it’s difficult for him to imagine McGivens’ injuries were the result of an accident.

“He had an injury to the front of the head and also to the back,” he said. “It seems pretty likely to me that he died from an assault.”

Detectives were out on the streets Thursday investigating McGivens’ death, Sgt. Lorenzo Duarte said.

He did not confirm McGivens’ head wounds, but said that an autopsy, likely to occur early next week, would be needed to confirm the victim’s physical condition. “When we talk about an investigation, it doesn’t mean there’s foul play,” he said. “Nothing I see states any suspicion.” 

In addition to McGiven’s death earlier this week, another homeless man, Alexander Mansfield, who was sleeping in some bushes, suffered burns to more than 60 percent of his body in an unexplained fire earlier this week, Williams said. It is still unclear whether the blaze was set intentionally, by the man or by someone else, or if it was accidental. Mansfield was transported to the Torrance Burn Center, where he remained in a deep coma Thursday, Williams said.

Gina Sunseri, the fire inspector who is helping to investigate Mansfield’s case, said it’s difficult to know what happened to Mansfield as he is breathing through a tube and will remain so until he is brought out of his coma.

“Right now, we’re trying to talk to people who know him and get a sense of who he is and who he knows and just trying to figure out what happened to him,’’ she said.

— Noozhawk staff writer Lara Cooper can be reached at lcooper@noozhawk.com.