Posted on 08/20/2017 4:19:43 PM PDT by ARGLOCKGUY
An eviction turned deadly Friday night and a landlord is now in jail on a first-degree murder charge after police say he shot a tenant living at his parent’s Duck Key home.
Ryan Wilder, 32, of Winter Springs, Fla. is being held in county jail in Marathon on no bond. Monroe County Sheriff’s Office detectives say he shot and killed Kenneth Palicki, 47, shortly before 6:30 p.m. Friday night.
Palicki and his girlfriend, Colleen Lyons, 25, lived at 162 North Indies Drive, a house owned by Wilder’s parents, said Deputy Becky Herrin, media relations officer for the Sheriff’s Office. Palicki and Lyons had been served eviction papers requiring them to be out of the house by Aug. 23, Herrin said.
Wilder went to the house Friday and no one was home. He began taking items from the house outside when Palicki and Lyons returned home. Wilder and Palicki began arguing and Palicki told Lyons to call the Sheriff’s Office, which she did. While on the phone with a dispatcher, Lyons said Wilder had a pistol in a holster on his hip.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/florida-keys/article168224232.html#storylink=cpy
I have almost never heard of an eviction that I objected to. The landlord should be able to evict at the expiration of a lease, with a 30 day notice for a month-to-month renter, upon nonpayment of rent, or upon observing significant structural damage, or for any other behavior outside the lease. It’s the landlord’s property.
Shooting the tenant is not okay, unless it was self-defense, but otherwise I’m almost always on the landlord’s side.
Probably won’t get their security deposit back either.
Sorry, but the landlord had no business being there until after August 23rd. Too many landlords take the ‘lord’ part too literally. I would like to see more details, but given he basically was trespassing (yes, a landlord can be doing that), it makes a self-defense case that much more difficult to win.
The tenant should not have had to be evicted. He should have left voluntarily when he could not pay the rent or otherwise did not meet the landlord’s criteria for remaining. That does not excuse shooting him, and it would not surprise me if the landlord was in the wrong also (particularly removing private property before the date on the eviction notice), but the tenant was morally very much in the wrong.
The law is the law. I have also seen bad and illegal evictions in my time. The larger point stands. The law said the tenant had until August 23rd to leave the premises. The landlord was wrong in entering the premises prior to that date.
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