Ex-addict is evicted for second time

A FORMER heroin addict who made the lives of neighbours hell has been thrown out of her flat – for the second time.

Residents were left living in fear because of the behaviour of 52-year-old Debbie Hill and a string of visitors to her home, Plymouth magistrates heard.

The court made a closure order shutting down the grandmother's flat in Stonehouse for three months.

Magistrates read complaints from neighbours about noisy, violent visitors and Hill's threatening and abusive behaviour.

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Plymouth City Council, applying for the closure order, said residents were too afraid to give evidence in person for fear of reprisals.

One said: "It's hell living here."

Another resident said: "There are often eight or nine people out there. I am afraid to let the kids out to play."

Among 12 anonymous statements, one person said as many as 50 or 60 people would visit the ground-floor flat in a day. Someone else saw one man armed with a knife chasing another down the street.

Presiding magistrate Samir Sidhom said: "We have heard evidence of shouting and swearing, screaming and offensive language, banging on the windows and violent arguments."

Police and council contractors last night boarded up the Torr Homes premises so a new tenant can be found.

The court was told it was the second time Hill and her 18-year-old daughter Nicole Hajiyianni had been thrown out of the flat.

Magistrates granted a "crack house" closure order against the premises in 2008 amid what the bench ruled was "drug-fuelled" behaviour.

But an appeal against the order was upheld at Plymouth Crown Court and the pair were allowed back into the flat.

Dylan Sadler, for the city council, said in opening the application that Hill had been put on a suspended possession order threatening her with eviction.

He added residents believed drugs were being dealt on the premises.

City council anti-social behaviour officer Angela Irving said there was "genuine fear" among witnesses.

She added: "Some say they suffered reprisals after the earlier proceedings, though I cannot provide evidence of that."

Magistrates read statements reporting shouting in the flat and visitors banging on the window in the early hours.

One said: "There are people coming and going all the time. I am afraid to go out. I don't walk past her window and I don't walk past her because she abuses me."

Another resident said they heard Hill swearing and shouting in the corridors: "Flora Court is going to get blown up and your cars, what have I ever done to you?"

Hill, contesting the order, claimed she was herself petrified by two of the visitors who were suspected drug dealers.

She admitted they "took over her flat" and would kick down her door in if she did not let them in.

Hill, who has lived there for 12 years, said she had been a heroin user for 15 years but was now clean and she denied that her flat was ever used for selling drugs.

She told the court she and Nicole Hajiyianni would be forced to live with one of her other daughters.

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