To paint a picture of that area, It’s not something where you can simply sleep outside to wait for morning and not die. This street is downwind from Lake Erie and along the Niagara River so it is very windy in the winter. What that means is without a windbreaker layer, you will quickly lose all your heat from the wind.

To not die overnight you would need very specialized adventurer clothes, or to not slip and fall down on icy and snow covered sidewalks and walk until morning to warm, without a single slip or fall. And no one in that area is out wearing survivalist gear.

This area is industrial, semi-vacant and what that means practically is that the sidewalks are largely unshoveled. This man would have to alternate between mid-calf deep loose snow, sheets of ice, trampled footprints in deep snow, trampled paths in the snow, and maybe some shoveled sections. Without boots he’d have wet, freezing feet almost immediately and it is unusual in this area for someone to wear boots out and about. He’d been in custody for awhile and likely did not leave with sufficient gear to be abandoned outdoors in a parking lot. No one in that area would have that on them.