A trained doctor who bitterly disputed rulings by his homeowners association about his property opened fire at a meeting, killing the board president and a member, authorities said Monday. It is an uncommon case of deadly violence involving the often elected group volunteers whose job it is to make sometimes unpopular decisions about their neighbors.
HOA boards ate volunteers, but a likely reason for the violence is a pattern of corruption and abuse of the power the board holds. As communities without HOAs are harder to find and less conveniently located, many residents end up in these communities with no voluntary option to withdraw consent from the organization.
Mahmoud Yousef Hindi, 55, of Louisville pleaded not guilty to murder charges and other counts in Jefferson Circuit Court Monday and said he needs a public defender. Prosecutors have said they are considering seeking the death penalty for Hindi, a Jordanian-trained doctor whose medical license had expired.
I'm not sure why nationality and career ate even relevant...
Authorities have not pinpointed what exactly caused the outburst on Sept. 6 in a community church. Police did say that Hindi angrily had confronted the Spring Creek Homeowners Association over a fence it said didn't meet its height or design requirements in the upscale neighborhood of Louisville. It also objected to his driveway.
Frustration over such decisions can boil over into shouting matches, fistfights and, in the rarest of circumstances, the kind of violence that surprised Hindi's neighbors, some of whom said Hindi's threatening demeanor caused the family who lived next door to move out.
"I have never seen a situation where emotions become so raw," said David F. Feingold, an attorney who represents homeowners associations in the San Francisco Bay area. "It's like carrying around nitroglycerin. You just have to handle it very carefully."
Maybe if we just give residents the option to withdraw from the association there would be less anger and tension in the situation.
Deadly violence is not unprecedented. In Arizona, a man was convicted of murdering two women when he opened fire at a homeowners meeting in 2000. Richard Glassel, who was sentenced to death, had run-ins with his HOA over awning and air-conditioning units.
In Chicago, a man was convicted of murder in the 2004 shooting death of a 75-year-old woman who was a board member of his condominium association. Another woman was wounded. The shooter, Zdislaw Kuchlewski, had been evicted from his condo, the result of more than a year's dispute with his condo association's board over infractions of building rules.
The man said at his trial that he was distraught over his eviction but did not plot the attack.
The problem is that homeowners don't always buy into the group concept of an association, one expert said.
"They feel that my home is my castle and I should be able to do what I want," said Evan McKenzie, an associate professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
There are approximately 300,000 homeowners associations in the United States, according to HOA-USA.com, a website that tracks and provides advice to associations nationwide. That number represents over 40 million households, and 70 percent of associations are managed by volunteers, the group says. And the job is not for everyone, with people not wanting to get involved in judging their neighbors' property.
Maybe there is a reason for the general dislike of associations?
Killed in the Louisville shooting were association president 73-year-old David Merritt and board member 69-year-old Marvin Fisher, according to papers filed with the Kentucky Secretary of State office. Hindi also faces seven counts of first-degree wanton endangerment as several other people were at the meeting.
"Associations are seen as the bad guys," Feingold said. "They've got a rap for being overreaching and overbearing. In America, we have 'My home is my castle.' You're really challenging that proposition."
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