Chicago family enraged by ‘professional squatter’ who has taken over their dead mom’s house

A family is at odds with a ‘professional squatter’ with a lengthy criminal record who has taken over his dead mother’s home and refused to leave for the past six months.

Chicago resident Darthula Young revealed her family’s situation this week, calling ex-con Takito Murray a ‘professional’ con man for taking up residence in his late mother’s Chatham home since September.

Explaining the increasingly common situation in an interview, Young said she became aware of Murray’s plan days after her mother’s death, when she arrived at the duplex where the old woman lived and found a bullet hole in the front window.

Upon closer inspection, Young would soon realize that the locks on the two-story duplex that has been in his family for generations were also changed.

Eventually, Young would realize that Murray was to blame, and he took advantage of his mother’s death to take over the house he had owned for over 30 years.

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speaking to CBS ChicagoYoung says that since realizing that, police have been unreceptive to her and her family members in the ongoing fight to get Murray out, telling her she will have to wait more than half a year for the city’s court system to plagued by crime adequately addresses the offense.

“It’s been a nightmare,” Young said of the city’s hesitation to forcibly relocate Murray, a career criminal who has been handcuffed for drug and gun offenses at least six times since 2017, and was apparently shot. inside the apartment at some point. after moving.

“On September 23, I got a call from the neighbors saying there was a shooting in the building, and when I went to the building and put my key in, it didn’t work,” Young told reporter Charlie De Mar on Thursday. .

“The person who was 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.

Young would later reveal that, such is the case with most squatter-related incidents, Illinois law largely prohibits her and her family members from taking action against the unwanted guest.

Currently, laws in the notoriously progressive Prairie State prohibit his family from being forced evict the tenant, or turn off the utilities to the two-story house until a proper court order is issued.

Experts estimate that such an order could take up to eight months, given the recent crime wave that has persisted since the pandemic and, in turn, has ensnared city courts.

Officials, including progressive Mayor Lori Lightfoot, have vowed to quell the crime epidemic but have been largely unsuccessful, despite a recent abrupt change in policy that saw her abandon plans to defund the city’s police force. .

But crime is currently up nearly 50 percent from this time last year in the Windy City, and nearly 100 percent since 2021, a year that was hailed as one of the city’s worst in decades.

Perhaps most pronounced is the still-rising rate of robbery and crime committed by armed criminals, which has increased dramatically since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The city’s inability to address Young’s situation is indicative of the city’s ongoing struggles and serves as the The latest blow to the city’s fading image beleaguered under Lightfoot, who since taking office in late 2019 has seen crime soar to historic levels.

And with rents rising rapidly and homelessness also a problem, squatter cases are on the rise, largely due to the fact that repeat offenders like Murray know they can live rent-free for months.

That said, Young, who has hired a lawyer to help her with her case as she works her way through the city’s court system, says Murray has repeatedly told her he plans to leave soon.

“Every time I’ve been there, he tells me he’s leaving in two weeks. He leaves in two weeks. He just can’t find a place,” she said.

CBS Chicago reportedly confronted Murray outside the residence earlier in the week, in an interaction in which the ex-con brazenly admitted to taking the elderly woman’s home, claiming he was paying rent to one of Young’s brothers. .

‘So you do acknowledge that it was your mother’s building, that it was owned by your mother?’ reporter Charlie De Mar asked Murray about the alleged arrangement.

“Yeah, I guess I give it to you: his mother and his brothers, that was his building,” Murray reportedly replied.

Young, however, argues otherwise, saying that neither she nor any of her relatives have reached such an arrangement.

He adds that the city, in addition to being unable to take immediate action against the squatter, has refused to shut off the water at the residence, leaving Young responsible for a $1,300 bill that continues to mount.

Young says that for the past seven months, she and her family have been trying to lay siege to the city to evict Murray, but have been repeatedly told to wait for an official order.

Michael Zink, a landlord-tenant attorney not involved in the case, told CBS that Young’s problem is not uncommon and that evictions of squatters in overwhelmed cities like Chicago and New York can take up to eight months. through the legal system.

“The problem that the police have is that when they show up at a scene like this, they don’t know who is telling the truth,” the lawyer explained.

He added that squatting in Chicago, where the average rent for a room is more than $2,200, is particularly on the rise, and that the courts will need time to catch up with a growing queue of violators.

Earlier this month, squatters occupied the home of another deceased woman in Chatham, just blocks from Youngs’ mother’s home, and are said to still be living there illegally.

As for Young, he said he will be back in court in a couple of weeks, hopefully to resolve the issue.