Daniel Gauntlett

Daniel Lee Gauntlett (1978–2013) was a homeless man who died of hypothermia in the village of Aylesford, Kent. Gauntlett's death has been linked with the criminalisation of squatting in residential properties introduced in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012.

Life
Gauntlett had worked in the scrap metal trade, and as a decorator. In 2006 his marriage broke up and he separated from his wife and two children. He was briefly imprisoned for burglary three years before his death. His mother, brother, sister and niece live in East Malling, three miles from Aylesford. Gauntlett's parents' are divorced and his younger brother died at the age of 18. He suffered from depression.

Death
On the night of 23 February 2013, with the -2°C temperature exacerbated by wind chill, Gauntlett left his tent and moved to sleep away from the frozen ground, on the veranda of an empty, boarded-up bungalow in Hermitage Lane, Aylesford. Previously, police had prevented him from breaking into the bungalow, which was due to be bulldozed. On this night, Gauntlett took "the fatal decision to abide by the law", and stayed outside. His body was spotted the next morning by a passer-by.

Response
Mike Weatherley, the MP responsible for the Early Day Motion that bought the criminalisation of residential squatting to parliament, was targeted in an anonymous website "Is Mike Weatherley MP Dead?", asserting he was personally responsible for Gauntlett's death.

"[The] situation of homeless people is already desperate. Mike Weatherley is personally responsible for making it worse. I hope he remembers that every time he tries to go to sleep."

Mike Weatherley responded to the accusations: "It is true that some of those who are homeless have squatted but this does not make them squatters. A typical squatter is middle-class, web-savvy, legally minded, university-educated and, most importantly, society-hating. They are political extremists whose vision for society is a dysfunctional medieval wasteland without property rights, where an Englishman’s castle is no longer his home."

On the same Saturday, Douglas Poynton, 45, another homeless man, died in Aylesford. An inquest is ongoing into the cause of death.