Georgia homeowner arrested after trying to move back into her own house inhabited by squatter

 A Georgia woman was arrested and charged with criminal trespassing after she tried to move into her own home — but was rebuffed by an alleged squatter.

“I spent the night on a mat on a concrete floor in deplorable conditions while this woman, this squatter, slept in my home,” said Loletha Hale, who was arrested outside her mother’s old home in Livingston on Dec. 9.

Hale had arrived at the house to clean the place out after a months-long battle with the alleged squatter, Sakemeyia Johnson, whom a court had ordered out in mid-November.

But when she arrived, Johnson – who had never been a tenant of Hale, and was merely related to an evicted tenant’s partner — was still inside, and had brought somebody along to intimidate Hale.

“I returned on Monday to start painting and she had broken the locks at my property,” Hale told WSB-TV.

“She just caught up out of nowhere. She had this guy with her, and I locked the door. I locked the screen door, and he forced himself in telling us to get out,” she added.

Hale refused to back down, and the police eventually arrived. And when they did, bodycam footage showed an officer asking her to see Johnson’s side of things.

“Just think of it from this perspective, though. Everybody isn’t as fortunate as you to have a bed. All the little things, a bed in their house, food in the kitchen,” the officer said.

When Hale refused to back down, she was cuffed and carted off, and with her arrest report alleging she “executed an illegal eviction and forcibly removed Ms. Johnson’s belongings,” and at one point “could clearly be heard stating ‘leave before I get my gun.’”

She was charged with a misdemeanor count of terroristic threats and criminal trespassing, while Johnson has received no charges, according to WSB-TV.

“To see that woman walk into my mom’s house while I was in the police car, something is wrong with this picture. Something is inherently wrong with this picture,” Hale said.

Trouble started at the house back in August when Hale says she caught Johnson living there without her knowledge.

Johnson received a squatting citation, but a Clayton County judge ruled “Sakemeyia Johnson is not a squatter” because of her relation to the evicted tenant’s partner – which she could be heard using in her favor on bodycam footage from the Dec. 9 altercation.

“I was written a citation saying I was a squatter. But a judge signed an order saying that I wasn’t a squatter,” Johnson said in the footage.

Hale fought that decision through a series of grueling hearings and appeals, eventually succeeding in legally ousting Johnson on Nov. 18. 

But the woman appears to have ignored the eviction.

“How can she not be squatting when I’ve never had any type of contract relationship with this person?” Hale asked.

Squatting has become a more common problem in Georgia in recent years.

In 2017 there were just three squatting cases, but in 2021 it had climbed to 50.

By 2023, there were 198 civil squatting cases across the state.