A Chicago woman is speaking about her family’s fight to remove a “professional squatter” from the apartment building she inherited from her deceased mother.
A squatter is defined as an individual who lives on the property without the permission of the property owner.
Darthula Young says that she and her siblings inherited their mother’s two-flat apartment building on Vernon Avenue near 80th Street in Chicago, Illinois, after her mother passed away last year. Young’s mother had owned the home for 30 years, but now, an uninvited guest identified as Takito Murray has taken over the building.
Young told CBS Chicago that after a neighbor called her to inform her there had been a shooting in the building, she arrived to find the locks to the building had been changed and there was a bullet hole in one of the windows.
“On September 23, I got a call from the neighbors to say there HAD been a shooting in the building,” said Young. “And when I went to the building and put my key in, it didn’t work. 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 a professional squatter.”
The police told Young that there was nothing they could do and informed her she needed to fight Murray through the court system. Young hired a lawyer and has been trying since last September to get Murray out of her home.
CBS Chicago got in touch with Murray, who claimed that he was looking for a place to live but could not find one easily.
“I’m in the process of finding somewhere to stay,” said Murray. “You can’t just move like that. Hopefully, by the beginning of May or April — sometime in April. We’ve been looking.”
Young added that Murray has been telling her that he would be vacating the building soon since September. “It’s been a nightmare. It’s been a nightmare,” she…
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