Just awful.
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Whoa. I know barn staff can be hard to find, but wow. What a psycho.
Not a position I would ever be in because we just have a little family farm, but this story makes me wonder. What do you do if you allow a person to take up residency on your farm and they don’t do the work they agreed to? Are you stuck with them due to tenant’s rights?
It sounds like his drinking was already an issue and the owner may have been stuck with him because he was living there.
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Sounds like Meth fueled rage.
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Horrific story.
& Why background checks or references are not optional for hires. Especially if they’ll be resident on your property.
As a former landlord, checking local laws re: eviction can give you the legal steps to get rid of an undesirable tenant.
In this case, I’m going to assume Word of Mouth or Friend if Friend type of reference gave this woman the justification to let this man work for her.
As soon as his behavior - the drinking - became an issue she should have taken steps to get rid of him.
I know hindsight is 20/20, but thinking your nice, gated community is a guarantee of safety is not enough.
I do hope she & her friend recover from their injuries.
And that she reviews her practices for hiring help.
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That’s quite an assumption.
He’d only been there a month. You might not realize that this is victim blaming. It could have happened to just about anyone.
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I understand your points.
& Victim Shaming is not at all what I intended.
My reply was to @moonlitoaksranch question about tenancy.
What kind of references do you imagine were provided in this case?
I learned this lesson early in my 25+yrs as a landlord.
We once leased the 2nd floor of the 2-flat DH & I owned to a nice-seeming couple.
We did no background or credit check & did not follow up references from previous landlords.
We lived on the 1st floor, both of us working full-time.
Then a month later next door neighbor complained about the teens sitting on our front steps during the day, drinking beer, swearing & throwing cans at them.
Turned out couple had invited their 18yo son to move in. He was not included on the lease.
& Would not have been a problem if his behavior hadn’t caused one.
We asked them to move as lease had been voided by this action.
How long should I have waited to remove these tenants?
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They broke the lease, you evicted them. Pretty simple. This isn’t about you or your experience. It is a very different scenario. There may not have even been a formal lease or rental agreement.
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Not so very different.
Madman was her tenant.
Even with a legal lease, eviction isn’t 1-2-3 Gone easy.
DH was a locksmith who was hired to change locks on a squatter whose landlord was a lawyer.
Guy ignored eviction notices for over 2yrs.
DH wasn’t able to do the job as law didn’t permit it.
I’m through arguing. You?
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I’m through discussing your experience.
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Touche
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This is terrible. You do wonder where he came from, how she sourced him, if he was recommended, etc. It seems unlikely that he “suddenly” became a violent alcoholic.
We have leased our on-farm cabin in the past, and once we offered the tenant a break in cost in exchange for her doing some specific chores. She had been my vet’s assistant. I knew her. And … She was an awful tenant. Did a lot of damage inside due to neglect and stupidity, and she was unreliable with the chores. My saving grace was a 6 month lease and i didn’t renew it. I will never lease it again.
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I suspect it may have been just straight up mental illness exacerbated by alcohol. You just don’t know people until they’re in home or on your property. Poor lady. Big kudos to her friend for saving her life.
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I don’t know anything about these particular people.
But I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of more than a handful of people in the horse business who do any kind of background check or anything like that when they are hiring barn help.
If the prospective employee mentions one or two references, there might be a tiny bit of follow up. But usually not a lot.
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I’ve seen a couple of farms do this sort of thing–they want someone who is live-in help who stays with the horses, so they allow the person to move their RV onto the property. I know how hard it is to find good help nowadays, much less full-time, live-in help, and maybe she was desperate.
OR he might have had decent references (checked or unchecked) and when he was sober did an okay enough job, and when his alcoholism got out of control, things spiraled. Plenty of alcoholics can stay off the sauce long enough (a month) to make a decent impression.
It breaks my heart to hear this woman was doing night check (because he wasn’t doing his job) when she was attacked and is still running her business from her hospital bed. It sounds like her business is her life and she just wanted an employee to help, and this happened.
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In Fl you are. You have to follow eviction proceedings
To answer some other questions, you can begin that at any time , like the day the obnoxious not on lease teens were discovered or the day machete guy didn’t perform his duties or start showing up drunk etc.
it wouldn’t take 2 years though, in Fl The whole proceeding takes a couple of months and if they still refuse to leave the sheriff comes and removes them.
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I think “drunk and threatening” would be cause for a rapid eviction - not sure of the exact florida rules on that, but I know that in most states a tenant threatening harm or acting in a threatening manner fast-tracks the eviction.
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evict? how about just driving that RV to some other part of the county
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It’s like hiring an employee in corporate America. Do your due diligence BEFORE you hire, check all references and try to read between the lines. It is a lot easier to hire than fire, even if the employee is not living on the premises. If this guy was that bad I am sure there are other employers he had problems with. If the employers will not tell, try to see if anybody that boarded there or dealt with him had problems because I am sure a nut case like this had other less serious outbursts.
I suppose some people are so happy to find SOMEBODY that they don’t check into the person very hard. YIKES! But I bet he had other less serious run-ins.
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They could be arrested and a temporary restraining order granted but it’s not permanent
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