UPDATE: The squatters have packed up and shipped out.
13 Action News first told you about Angela Laub-Carroll at her wit’s end as she struggled to kick a family of freeloaders out her aunt’s home in North Las Vegas.
Laub-Carroll served them eviction notices and even brought the cops. But the squatters wouldn’t leave. Over the weekend, after our story aired, the squatters moved out.
“It feels really good to have them out,” Laub-Carroll said.
But Laub-Carroll’s joy is short lived. “The aftermath, it doesn’t feel good.”
The squatters left the house in shambles, treating the home like a trash heap.
“I was just sick at my stomach,” Laub-Carroll said.
The squatters literally trashed the house. Empty beer cans and soda bottles litter the kitchen floor. Clothes and children’s toys cover the floor of each bedroom. The stench in the bathroom is horrific. And there is no running water.
The family home where Laub-Carroll played as a child is now a filthy and wretched wreck.
“The most disgusting condition I’ve ever seen,” Laub-Carroll said.
There’s garbage everywhere you look: a disheveled bed sits in living room; vile crud covers the stove; the cupboards and refrigerator are revolting.
Laub-Carroll says it’ll cost too much to make repairs, so she'll try to sell it.
ORIGINAL STORY:
NORTH LAS VEGAS (KTNV) -- Imagine freeloaders breaking into your home and never leaving. That is one woman says is happening in North Las Vegas. They’re damaging her home and they won’t get out.
13 Action News went right to the home on Carroll Street to ask the woman behind the door -- is she living there illegally?
"No sir," she replied, without opening the security door.
Angela Laub-Carroll, who owns the home, said she doesn’t know the people now taking up residence there.
"No I do not know 'em" Laub-Carroll said, adding that the woman is a squatter. "Yes she is. She definitely is."
When asked why she was in the home, the woman behind the door answered, "My landlord is Frances Smith. I've lived here for awhile."
Frances Schmidt is Laub-Carroll's aunt. Laub-Carroll tells us her aunt had lived at the home since the 1970s. Her aunt was hospitalized earlier this year, leaving the house vacant -- or so Laub-Carroll thought.
"Come to find out a couple has moved in there," Laub-Carroll said. “They just help themselves."
Laub-Carroll told us she called police and filed two eviction notices against a woman named Jessica Wheeler.
But Laub-Carroll said the apparent squatters told the cops this story: "My mother hired them to take care of my aunt. My mother does not know these people. She's never seen them in her life."
The woman behind the door tried to give us a similar line. "My husband was her emergency contact. And that's all I have to say."
When asked if she would be willing to show paperwork to prove she is the rightful renter, the woman behind door responded, "I'm not willing to say anything else. Thank you."
She closed the door and would not answer 13 Action News' questions about whether she would ever leave the home.
Laub-Carroll tells us she's taken all the proper steps. She's posted a notice stating she's retaking the property, filed that paperwork with the court, and served a notice of surrender.
But Laub-Carroll said the squatters filed paperwork with the court to let them stay at least for now.
