Florida property owners may be on the hook for thousands of dollars worth of damage after allegedly having human feces flung at them by a pair of lesbian squatters said to have been found living with as many as 15 pit bulls in their home.
(Video: Fox News)
Patti Peeples and Dawn Tiura are the co-owners of a rental property in the Hogan’s Creek neighborhood of Jacksonville, Florida. As they explained to Fox News host Lawrence Jones, shortly after they had listed the home for sale, the squatters moved in and refused to leave claiming they were the victims of a rental scam.
“I said, ‘This is a fraudulent lease, the house is not for rent,'” Peeples explained to Jones. They had been presented with a receipt that claimed the squatters had paid someone $3,330 toward a fraudulent lease.
Peeples told News4Jax that she had dispatched a handyman to the location to handle some minor repairs, “And when he went up to the house, he saw that there was a pit bull’s mother with 10 to 14 small puppies on the sunroom porch.”
It was then that she went to investigate what was going on and discovered the squatters who violently forced her out of the residence. Seeking aid from law enforcement proved fruitless as they did not have the authority to remove the couple without a court order.
“We called our attorney to see what our rights were. And he indicated that this had progressed now to grand theft and a criminal matter,” she explained. In the meantime, as the owners spent around $5,00o in attorney’s fees to seek the squatters removal, Peeples explained how they were attacked on a separate occasion while checking on the property.
“We were driving by at night, and they threw a brick at my car and damaged it, and we had the window partway down, and they threw human feces into the car,” she told News4Jax.
When the squatters had been removed, Peeples and Tiura discovered the interior had been wrecked, believed to be out of spite, with an estimated nearly $40,000 worth of damage left in their wake that may not be covered by insurance as they had not procured vacancy insurance. “This has been a 40-plus day process that we have been unable to take repossession of a home that we own by squatters who broke in and inhabited our home and then destroyed it.”
“Your heart just drops, and you just wonder what type of people can do this. It’s just wrong,” she told Jones.
Now, as they sort through the mess that has been left behind, the owners called on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) to help grant more protections against squatters who currently have 20 days to respond to a lawsuit, essentially providing nearly three weeks to remain as trespassers on someone else’s property.
“Squatters are nothing more than criminals who are breaking and entering into a house, should not be handled in civil court,” Peeples told Fox News. “They should be treated within the criminal court system.”
“We need to recognize that a squatter is not a tenant and that a squatter is committing a criminal act,” she added.
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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