Dekalb County, GEORGIA — A man who shot and killed a “squatter” Monday morning at his relative’s DeKalb County home has been charged with murder, officials said.
The shooting happened at a home at 1783 South Ponce De Leon Avenue Northeast just before 8 a.m.
According to preliminary reports, the homeowner was out of town and sent a relative to check on the house.
Terrance Medina, 39, had been charged in connection with the shooting.
From AJC.com: Channel 2 Actions News reported that the home’s owner, who lives out of town, sent a relative to the house to check on the property. That relative, now identified as Medina, encountered the trespasser and shot and killed him, according to the station.
Neighbors told Channel 2 the vacant house had been a target for squatters in the past.
No further information was immediately available.
Squatting is an action of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land and/or a building – usually residential – that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use.
Author Robert Neuwirth suggests that there are one billion squatters globally, that is, about one in every seven people on the planet. Yet, according to Kesia Reeve, “squatting is largely absent from policy and academic debate and is rarely conceptualised, as a problem, as a symptom, or as a social or housing movement.”
Some squatting movements are political, such as anarchist, autonomist, or socialist.
Some forms of squatting, such as adverse possession, or the legal process of property attainment, are seen as subordinate corrective actions towards a collapsed economy in the form of renovation and housing for homeless or unemployed. Many in society do not understand the laws, see the benefits of an occupier, or are envious of the marginal cost of the living conditions, which gives the public more negative perspectives or anger.
