An elderly property owner in Vallejo who was close to evicting some squatters got into an altercation with those squatters early Sunday morning in which he ended up with a sword through his chest and one of the squatters was fatally shot.
The craziness unfolded on Sunday, starting around 2:30 a.m. As KTVU reports, a group of at least four individuals, whom neighbors had taken to calling "The Cult" because of their odd behavior, had been squatting illegally on some commercial property on the 600 block of 3rd Street in Vallejo. (A Google Street View image shows a parking lot with multiple vehicles, RVs, and equipment on it at the end of a cul de sac.) Sometime Saturday night or early Sunday, according to these neighbors, the squatters found out that they were set to be forcibly evicted by the sheriff on Tuesday morning.
Patrick McMillan, who lives in a motor home on the property, told KTVU that the individuals "were throwing rocks and stuff" and trying to bang down the door of the 80-year-old property owner, Curt Lind, whose home was on the lot, because they were angry about the eviction.
According to McMillan, Lind called police, but they never showed.
Several hours later, around 7:30 a.m. Sunday, McMillan said Lind came knocking on his door covered in blood.
"I heard banging on the door and went and it was Kurt and he said ‘I’m dying,’" McMillan tells KTVU. "I saw him with a sword sticking through his back and it came out his chest about here and a flap of his face cut off. Blood."
There had been a confrontation in which an armed Lind allegedly shot two of the squatters, as Lind's son, Carl Lind, now tells KTVU.
In addition to being stabbed with a sword through the back and chest, the elder Lind's face was also slashed.
"The truth is, they jumped him," Carl Lind says.
And McMillan now tells KTVU, "After they attacked him [Curt] got his gun out and shot two of them, killed one of them. The other one had three shots to the chest."
Per KTVU, a 31-year-old female squatter was shot and killed, and a 27-year-old was the second person shot. The other two squatters have now been arrested by Vallejo police, who say they will be charged with murder as they are liable for the shooting death of their friend.
Neighbors tell the station that Lind had "a heart of gold" and went out of his way to help out neighbors and clean up trash.
One neighbor, Clinton Davidson, described the squatters saying, "What we have is a certain number of people who seem, how can I put this, seem a little bit off." Others told KTVU that they had been seen wandering the property nude and talking to themselves.
Carl Lind said that the eviction had taken as long as it had due to the statewide eviction moratorium during COVID, although it sounds like these tenants had never paid rent.
He also says his father is expected to survive, but may lose an eye.
Photo via Google Street View
