This past summer, Daniel Toma, a homeowner in Louisville, Kentucky, invited his friend, Amy Davis, and her boyfriend, Tyler Sencuk, over for a few beers.
Afterward, when the couple's car wouldn't start, Toma let them spend the night in his garage while they worked to fix it. After working on the car in the driveway for a few days, they brought along a mattress and other personal belongings. That’s when things started to head south.
The couple allegedly changed the locks on the garage, installed cable, and started to receive mail to Toma’s address — all without any formal agreement or rent payments.
“I asked them to go, my roommates asked them to go, they wouldn’t leave. We tried to tell them to leave. [Sencuk] started saying (they) had squatters rights,” Toma told WAVE. “I didn’t want to throw them out on the street, I was just trying to be kind.”
Toma put up a 30-day eviction notice around Labor Day — but the situation went from bad to worse.
Sencuk and one of Toma’s roommates got into a physical altercation, leading to Sencuk filing an emergency protective order against Toma. The judge granted the order, which forced Toma to stay 500 feet away from them — and his own home, effectively leaving him homeless.