CHICKASHA – A dilapidated house here that attracted vagrants and drug users was demolished last week, apparently to the relief of neighbors.
“The owner, who doesn’t live in Chickasha, tried to keep it boarded up,” but uninvited ‘guests’ continued to break in, Grady County Sheriff Gary Boggess told Southwest Ledger. “This residence has been the distribution point for fentanyl and other illegal drugs,” the Sheriff’s Office wrote in a Facebook post.
Deputies “served three search warrants at this residence within the last year and a half, and responded to numerous calls for service in the area because of the foot traffic coming and going” from the house, the department reported in a Facebook post.
Boggess said he met with the owner and with the city’s code enforcement unit to discuss the matter.
Afterward the owner signed an abatement authorization because “she couldn’t take care of the house,” which was unsanitary, uninhabitable, and had no water or electric service, Boggess said. “I wouldn’t have let my dogs live in that house.”
Repairing the structure would have been too costly because of “longtime drug and chemical exposure,” law enforcement officers said.
The city’s Public Works Department razed the house, at 1328 S. 10th St., on June 3.
The house was demolished “for the homeowners and taxpayers in that neighborhood, the children and elderly, who couldn’t venture out on their own property without being in fear for what might happen or who might accost them,” the sheriff’s wife posted in response to some critics.
A squatter found in the house was arrested and jailed.
“It’s not our desire to destroy a house, but … this unfortunately was the consequence,” the Sheriff’s Office stated on Facebook. “We’re looking at a couple more houses in town that are boarded up and not habitable,” Boggess told the Ledger.