According to reports, two female squatters and their pit bulls lived in a rental property in Florida for over a month, causing nearly $40,000 in damage – and attacking the owners by throwing bricks and human poo at them.
Patti Peeples and Dawn Tiura, co-owners of a rental home in Jacksonville, learned that their investment property had been repossessed by the couple after a handyman was sent in for repairs prior to inspection for a possible sale.
After an worker discovered a pit bull with a few dozen puppies basking on the sunroom porch, Peeples headed there only to seek out an unwelcome couple who had broken into the property, in line with News4Jax.
According to the owners, the ladies most certainly moved in in March, after the previous tenant left the home.
Tenants who were in a relationship claimed to police that that they had been victims of the Zillow rental scam, claiming that they signed the lease and paid the rent, security deposit and pet deposit to the bogus landlord, reported Fox News.
However, in line with a police report, one among the ladies was evicted in mid-February from a close-by home after the same story. In this case, she said she was paying rent to a landlord with the identical address because the one they paid to rent Peeples and Tiura’s property.
The owners finally regained control of their home this week after spending $5,000 in court fees.
“It was a 40+ day process where we were unable to reclaim the house we own as a result of tenants breaking into and occupying our home after which destroying it,” Peeples told News4Jax.
Peeples, who said the estate helps fund her retirement, claimed the squatters had also attacked her and Tiura.
“We were driving at night they usually threw a brick at my automobile and damaged it, we had a window partially down they usually dumped human feces within the automobile,” Peeples told Fox News.
It wasn’t until after the squatters were evicted from their apartment that the homeowners saw how much the couple had damaged their home. Among the wreckage were cupboards torn out, holes within the partitions, a washer and a dryer were missing, and dog poop was spreading across the property.
Annoyed Peeples summoned Governor Ron DeSantis and other politicians to alter state law to make it easier for landlords to displace squatters.
“Squatters are nothing but criminals who break right into a home and shouldn’t be prosecuted in civil court,” Peeples told Fox News. “They ought to be treated inside the criminal justice system.”
