A U.S. Army officer has spoken out after she returned to her Georgia home after coming off of active duty to find a squatter living there.
Last week, Lt. Col. Dahlia Daure, a member of the U.S. Army Reserves stationed in Chicago, shared with Atlanta-based ABC affiliate WSB-TV that she was in the midst of selling her home when a squatter took up residence.
Daure told the outlet that the squatter, Vincent Simon, said he had a lease and paid $19,000 upfront for six months, Fox News reported.
“That was quite alarming to find out that someone else had moved into my home,” she said Thursday during a “Fox News Tonight” segment.
According to WSB-TV’s report, Simon has been served with eviction papers. However, the outlet said, Daure will have to follow the legal process for eviction to have Simon removed from her property.
The DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office announced that its Uniform Unit and the DeKalb Marshals served an intruder affidavit to Simon, demanding he “immediately vacate an Ellenwood home in DeKalb County owned by a military officer.”
“Mr. Simon had been accused of illegally occupying the residence, which had been for sale by the owner while she was deployed with the U.S. Army Reserves in Chicago, Illinois. The civil service process was accomplished without incident and Mr. Simon vacated the residence, but a weapon was found inside the home and drugs were found on the suspect before he left the premises,” said an update from the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office Facebook Page.
“Mr. Simon was arrested and charged with Possession of a Firearm by a Convicted Felon and Possession of a Controlled Substance. He was taken into custody and transported to the DeKalb County Jail,” the update added.
In her interview with host Will Cain, Daure said the entire situation was “very aggravating.”
“It’s kind of unjust to find out that someone can literally move into your home with a fictitious lease with a company that doesn’t exist,” she told the host. “My house was not on the market for rent. It was on the market for sale. I had a contract on the house. And to find out that this person moved into my home right after I got done renovating– it was very aggravating, and I was angry.”
“The buyer got spooked, too. I had to terminate that contract,” she added, going on to explain the process of evicting Simon.
“I used the Georgia 44…title 44 1130 to get him out. A lot of people really don’t know about that. It has to do with the sheriff’s office, though. The police can’t get them out because it’s a civil matter,” she said. “But had I not gone to the media, I would not have had the opportunity to get my home back today.”
