According to reports, two female squatters and their pit bulls rampaged through a Florida rental property for more than a month, causing nearly $40,000 in damage — and attacking the landlords by throwing a brick and human poop at them.
Patty Peoples and Don Tiura, co-owners of a rental home in Jacksonville, discovered their investment property had been taken over by a couple after they sent a handyman to make repairs ahead of an inspection for a potential sale.
When the worker discovered a pit bull with about a dozen puppies on the sunroom porch, Peeples broke into the property only to find an unwanted pair. According to News4Jax,
According to the owners, the women most likely arrived in March after the previous tenant had vacated the house.
The illegal occupants, who were in a relationship, claimed to police that they were victims of a Zillow rental scam, saying they had signed a lease agreement and paid rent, a security deposit, to a false landlord. and had paid a pet deposit, Fox News reported,
According to a police report, however, in mid-February one of the women was evicted from a nearby home after a similar thread. In that instance, she said she paid rent to a landlord at the same address she paid to rent Peoples and Tiura’s property.
After shelling out $5,000 in court fees, the landlords finally regained control of their home this week.
Peoples told News4Jax, “It has been a process of over 40 days that we have been unable to reclaim the house that was destroyed by the people who vandalized our house. and then destroyed it.”
Peeples, who said the property is helping fund his retirement, claimed the encroachers attacked him and Tiura as well.
“We were driving at night, and they threw a brick at my car and damaged it, and we had part of the window down, and they threw human feces into the car,” Peoples told Fox News.
It was only after the landlords had given the boot to the landlords that they saw how badly the couple had destroyed their house. Among the wreckage were torn cabinets, holes in the wall, washer and dryer missing and dog poop spread through the property.
one angry peepal met with Gov. Ron DeSantis and asked other politicians to amend state law to make it easier for landlords to evict encroachers.
Peoples told Fox News, “Squatters are nothing more than criminals who are breaking and entering a house, not to be handled in civil court.” “They should be treated within the criminal court system.”