Elyria seeks payment for demolition of Marseilles Avenue home after fire

ELYRIA — The city is seeking reimbursement after the owner of a home the city demolished due to fire damage sold the property. City Council will vote on whether to place a demolition lien on 413 Marseilles Ave. for the purpose of recouping the rest of the nearly $12,000 the city spent demolishing the home. Council's Finance Commission voted on Monday to send the lien before Council as a whole and recommend its approval. The home caught fire on Aug. 20 and was damaged badly, with Chief Building Official Darryl Farkas saying on Monday that the home was "90 percent destroyed and then some." The structure was deemed unsafe after the blaze and so the city conducted an emergency demolition, which Farkas said cost $11,800. Farkas said that the owner of the home paid $9,000 for the demolition, and was then granted an extension by the city to pay the remaining $2,800. When the deadline to make the rest of the payment came and went and the city attempted to collect the payment, it found that the owner, Brockley K Properties LLC, had sold the property to Robert Shaw of Cleveland for $1,000 in November. The city reached out to the new owner, Farkas said, to inform them of the outstanding balance, but had not heard back as of Monday. Because of this, Farkas asked Council to implement a lien against the property for the remaining $2,800. At the same time that the fire destroyed 413 Marseilles Ave. in August, three people who were at the home at the time were arrested at the scene. Their arrest was unrelated to the fire, instead being the result of what has become known as Elyria's parakeet caper, a weekslong argument over the alleged theft of a parakeet that resulted in felony charges. Two of those arrested, Lucas McMullen, 44, of LaGrange Township and Molly Doughty, 43, were eventually indicted with felony breaking and entering among other charges for allegedly breaking into an elderly woman's apartment building and damaging the sitting area she kept outside her door. Police said that the pair did so because they believed the woman, who had found her own missing parakeet Clover on Facebook, had actually stolen McMullen's parakeet, named Scooby. McMullen had made a theft complaint and police met with the woman, who provided pictures and additional evidence that the bird was hers. In July, McMullen and Doughty allegedly broke into the woman's building to take revenge. They were arrested, along with a resident of 413 Marseilles Ave. who has not been charged, as the fire burned on Aug. 20. Contact Owen MacMillan at (440) 329-7123 or omacmillan@chroniclet.com.