This month’s dump appears to be the victim of two tragedies.
The first took place shortly after midnight on a Saturday in September 2007. Agustin “Tino” Figueroa crashed his motorcycle on Warren Avenue and was pronounced dead at the scene. A report in the Lewiston Sun Journal said police were investigating the cause of the crash, and “could not say if another vehicle or person was involved,” but the lack of follow-up stories suggests that even if someone else was there, they were not at fault.
Figueroa, a graduate of Monmouth Academy and New Hampshire College, worked for the Portland Marketing Group, a telemarketing firm. He was 29. Police said he was traveling west, in the direction of the duplex he owned on Allen Avenue. He was less than three minutes from home.
Today the duplex at 301 Allen Ave. is vacant. Empty cans litter the shrubs in front. Its pale lime-green siding is still intact, but a piece of wood crudely covers a broken window in the front door to unit A. A phone book slowly moulders in a plastic bag in front of unit B, while a piece of mail rots in the box. There’s a big black lock on Unit A’s door. Unit B’s door has no lock and a muddy bootprint at its base.
Hauntingly, the wood-paneled back entryway is lit by an electric lamp, even during the day. You can see it because the door to the back steps is gone.
The property passed to Figueroa’s folks, Tomas and Amneris Figueroa, who still live in Monmouth. Enter tragedy two.
Bank of America foreclosed on the property last June. A spokesperson for B of A told me the duplex belongs to Fannie Mae now. Andrew Wilson, a spokesman for the federally backed mortgage corporation, wasn’t able to shed much light on the situation, and the Figueroas declined to comment.
Wilson said Fannie tries to put holdings like this back on the market as soon as they can do so at a competitive price. This one was not listed on the website Fannie maintains to sell foreclosed homes, homepath.com, so it must not be ready for prime time yet.
— Patrick Banks
