A woman in Chicago is fighting a prolonged legal battle against a squatter who she says moved into her dead mother’s home in September and has since refused to leave. According to the woman’s neighbors, shooting could be heard in the house in September even though it was meant to be vacant at the time.
Darthula Young, the woman who now owns the building, spoke to CBS Chicago in an interview. She recounted her and her siblings’ troubles with getting the squatter evicted, which has only been made more difficult by recent laws. It all began in the fall of last year, she said:
“On September 23, I got a call from the neighbors to say there’s been a shooting in the building – and when I went to the building and put my key in, it didn’t work.”
The locks being changed was not the only new feature the new tenants added, according to Young, who said the front window now also showed a bullet hole. This is the beginning of what would become a nightmare experience for Young, who began trying to reclaim the family home; she said:
“The person who had been shot in the apartment – this guy named Takito Murray – came back from the hospital, and informed us and the police that he now lived there, that he had rights – he was professional squatter.”
The “professional squatter,” Takito Murray, also spoke to CBS Chicago, giving his own side of the story. He says there is a renter’s agreement between himself and the Young siblings and that he is not squatting. He also claims that he will be moving out as soon as he finds another living arrangement, which he expects to happen in April:
“I’m in the process of finding somewhere to stay. You can’t just move like that.”
“Hopefully, by the beginning of May or April – sometime in April. We’ve been looking.”
According to landlord-tenant attorney Michael Zink, this eviction process is common, with cases taking months to become resolved. He says that in this kind of he-said-she-said case, court proceedings may take half a year or longer:
“Evictions in Chicago – whether it’s about squatters or anything else – are taking approximately six to eight months.”
“The problem that police have is when they show up to a scene like that, they don’t know who is telling the truth.”
This case is, unfortunately, common in the Chicago area. Fox News recently reported on a similar situation involving a squatter and homeowner, Karen Polk. In this instance, the squatter claims that they paid several months’ rent up front to a mysterious figure who claimed to be the property’s landlord. That case is also taking a long time to be sorted out in the courts. According to Fox, she said:
“This all started in September, but we didn’t get a court date until mid-December. And that particular session, none of the occupants showed up. That’s just how the process goes. If they don’t show up, another court date is assigned.”
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