Police: Man refused to leave foreclosed home
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BY LORI PILGER / Lincoln Journal Star
Police arrested a 53-year-old man on suspicion of trespassing after he refused to leave his southeast Lincoln home, foreclosed upon a year ago.
About 12:30 p.m. Friday, the SWAT team went to Kerry Donovan’s door at 6600 Cumberland Drive, near South 56th Street and Pine Lake Road, to arrest him and serve a search warrant, Lincoln Officer Katie Flood said.
Donovan wasn’t home but was seen walking to the area shortly after 1 p.m. and was arrested without any problems, she said.
He had moved back into the house after Nov. 16, 2007, according to a Lincoln Police affidavit. On that day, a US Bank real estate employee called police to say Donovan had refused to leave the property that was deemed in May 2007 to belong to the bank.
The property is valued at $269,300, according to the Lancaster County Assessor’s Office.
Officers secured the property, turning it over to a bank agent, only to have Donovan move back into the house, according to the affidavit.
Bank agents were unable to gain entry to the house, in part because of security lights and security dogs Donovan placed there, the affidavit states.
He was charged Friday in Lancaster County Court with first-degree criminal trespassing, a misdemeanor. It was the latest in a series of conflicts stemming from Donovan’s issues with the bank.
This spring, Donovan protested with a handwritten message on a sandwich-board sign outside Lincoln US Bank branches.
The back of his sign read: “USBank 4Closes Illegal.” The front: “Honk if USBank Sucks.”
Donovan has had a long period of financial and personal woe: a failed used-car business and theft by deception conviction in 1997 followed by bankruptcy, divorce and a hefty IRS tax lien.
In 2004, the bank took steps to foreclose his home. In court appeals, Donovan argued the bank didn’t give proper legal notification of the foreclosure.
The bank said it did, and Judge Jeffre Cheuvront ruled in the bank’s favor.
The disabled father of two started protesting.
“I just got fed up,” he said earlier this year. “I’m not very good with the Internet, and I didn’t know what to do to contact the rest of the world.”
Donovan bonded out of jail Friday afternoon. US Bank has hired off-duty sheriffs to guard the house 24-7.
Reach Lori Pilger at 473-7237 or lpilger@journalstar.com. Cory Matteson contributed to this report.
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