In case that viral video of a New York woman being arrested trying to kick squatters out of her house wasn’t enraging enough, another woman was reportedly murdered and her body stuffed into a duffel bag by squatters who’d taken over her deceased mother’s home, according to reports.
52-year-old Nadia Vital was found dead in a New York City apartment on East 31st Street in Manhattan last week. Police say she’d just flown over from Spain to clean out the apartment, which had been owned by her mother who had passed away a few months prior.
“We believe that some squatters took the apartment over and this woman came home…and walked in on the squatters that were there,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said, adding that the home was “an upscale apartment” where the elevator serves as the front door to each unit.
Related: 'Squatters Rights' Let Thieves 'Legally' Steal People's Homes
Vitel’s son, 19-year-old Michael Medvedev, came to the apartment looking for his mom after not hearing from her for 48 hours, only to find her body stuffed inside a duffel bag. She’d apparently been beaten to death, as police found evidence of blunt force trauma to the head, multiple facial fractures, a brain bleed and two broken ribs.
The suspected murderers then fled in Vitel’s Lexus SUV and made it all the way to Pennsylvania before crashing the car. Police are now searching for two people they think may have been involved, described as a man and a woman in their 20s.
"Squatters rights" laws have popped into the national spotlight in recent days as a spate of incidents all across the country have called attention to laws that essentially allow invaders to simply move into someone else's property and stay without the owner's permission, provided they claim they've lived on the property for a certain amount of time. In New York City, squatters are considered legal tenants after inhabiting a property for only 30 days, forcing the owner to go through an expensive and lengthy court process and making it nearly impossible to evict them.
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TikToker goes viral by telling illegal immigrants how to "invade" homes in America thanks to progressive squatting laws.
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