A Texas woman whose home became a “drug den” for squatters and who sold her furniture at a yard sale said she hired the man as a repairman after receiving a recommendation from TikTok.
Terry Boyette appeared before a Texas Senate committee Wednesday and revealed the horrors he faced when trying to remove a vagrant from his home.
“This is theft. This is vandalism and break-in,” the committee chairman, Texas Sen. Paul Bettencourt, was quoted as saying. fox 4 dallas.
“He was selling your property on your front lawn. I’m furious. Things like this should never happen in Texas and will never happen again after this bill passes.” Probably not.”
Boyette said her nightmare began last June when she fired an employee from the social media platform to do repairs on her home while she cared for her elderly mother in Florida. WFAA.
While the repairman was out, he began squatting at Boyette’s Mesquite home, about 22 miles from downtown Dallas, and allowed other strangers to sit with him.
Boyette told the Post in March that painters broke in and vandalized the place, leaving cracked pipes in the oven and needles in the drawers.
For nearly a year, police turned her home into a biohazard zone and told her they couldn’t fix the problem.
In December, a judge finally granted an eviction notice forcing the workers from their homes, but as the holidays were approaching, the judge extended the squatters’ appeal for 30 days.
“She didn’t want him to be homeless during the holidays, so I ended up being homeless during the holidays,” Boyette told WFAA.
When the suspected squatters learned they were being evicted from the house, they began selling off the washer, dryer, refrigerator, and dining table.
The alleged squatters were served with a final eviction notice on February 6th and were officially evicted on March 20th.
But nearly a year after the repairmen moved into the house, Boyett said he still cannot return because of the havoc and mess left behind by multiple vagrants.
Boyette’s Mesquite home was one of 475 such break-ins in the Dallas-Forth Worth area, Bettencourt said.
But he and other lawmakers plan to put an end to the problem with a new bill.
Bettencourt found that Texas, like many other states, does not clearly define squatters or what a homeowner can legally define as a squatter in court.
He has since joined the committee to find answers to loopholes in the law that many vagrants use to sleep in homes that don’t pay rent, or to enter illegally and claim to be tenants. I started an association.
Sen. Royce West, one of the committee’s members, asked Boyette why Mesquite police were unable to remove the squatters.
Boyette detailed how police left her high and dry for months, a matter that was only resolved after months of back and forth in court.
“I called the police. They said, ‘How long has he been there?’ He said it would be about 2 weeks. They said this is a civil matter,” she told the committee.
Mr Boyett said the alleged squatter returned to his home in April, banged on the door and demanded to be let inside.
The man was later arrested on suspicion of trespassing.
“It makes no sense. It makes no sense at all. I’m starting to get ridiculous too,” West declared. “I want to know what the Mesquite Police Department doesn’t understand about this ordinance.”
“They said it was because no one lived there,” Boyette told senators.
“That’s bullshit,” he responded about law enforcement incompetence.
Lawmakers from both parties called on police for answers.
Bettencourt asked Mesquite police to attend their next meeting to explain why the man was not removed from the home.
