My Friend With Cancer Gets Illegally Evicted From Her Home, Please Help!

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From the OC Weekly:

On the morning of October 10, Niko Black was alone and ill when deputies from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department arrived to evict her from her Garden Grove home on Shannon Avenue. “I’m in my bed and I see them storming my property,” she tells the Weekly. “I crawl to my wheelchair.”

The 37-year-old Mescalero Apache woman, who suffers from a rare, malignant and metastatic form of cancer, refused to open the door, saying that they had no legal right to be there. On the other side was a taped copy of a court order obtained from Federal Bankruptcy Judge Theodore C. Albert in late August that she firmly believes should have prevented the OCSD from carrying out the eviction. The deputies acted anyway.

“They break down my door,” Black recounts. “I’m sitting there in my wheel chair. I’m about 100 pounds of shriveled-up cancer and a threat to no one.”

What came next, she says, was much more harrowing. “Sergeant Bob Sima puts a gun to my face, finger on the trigger, no safety and walks around me,” Black states, pausing to emotionally gather herself. “There’s no reason, except for to threaten my life, for an intimidation factor, to put a gun to my head.”

With neighbors lining up outside watching, Black’s health began to worsen. “I needed my medication, I couldn’t breathe and I was having a seizure,” she said, claiming that deputies were unresponsive to concerns about her condition; one officer even remarked that she ‘looked good’ to him. An ambulance finally arrived at her friend’s behest and she was forcibly removed from her home and hospitalized.

Please sign Linda Rife’s Petition

Wells Fargo and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department pulled a gun on a sick cancer patient, my good friend Niko Black and evicted her from her home in California — in violation of a court order saying she could stay put.

That’s right — my friend Niko, who is fighting breast cancer and has struggled with numerous health problems over the years, was illegally evicted at gunpoint, as she struggled to pull herself into her wheelchair.

Niko has owned her home for almost 20 years — and has lived there since she was a child. She never even had a mortgage with Wells Fargo, and has entered into a civil suit around the fraud they have perpetrated against her, fraud that goes back many years. After she filed bankruptcy, the court sided with Niko and put a stay on Wells Fargo’s eviction.

Niko posted the court order on her front door. Despite this, officers from the Sheriff’s Department along with Wells Fargo employees harassed her on several occasions. Finally, on October 10, 2012 officers broke into her home and forcibly evicted her.

When I learned about what happened to Niko, I was appalled, so I decided to start a petition. I am asking Wells Fargo and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department to comply with the federal court order, allow Niko Black back into her home and ensure that can continue to live in her lifelong home. Will you join me?

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