Couple making lives a misery are evicted
A couple who made neighbours' lives miserable with rowdy karaoke sessions, drunken behaviour and racist abuse have been evicted from their Black Country home.
A couple who made neighbours' lives miserable with rowdy karaoke sessions, drunken behaviour and racist abuse have been evicted from their Black Country home.
Jobless Gary Devey, aged 53, and wife Michelle, 48, were kicked out of their Walsall home after neighbours' complaints, court orders and a four-month jail sentence.
The couple angered people in Stephenson Avenue, Beechdale, by belting out hits — including You Can't Hurry Love by Phil Collins and Endless Love by Diana Ross —in late-night singing sessions.
They have now been told to leave after Beechdale Community Housing Association got a court order gaining possession of the property.
The association said the total number of complaints received over two years, which included fighting, arguing, shouting, drunken behaviour and late-night noise, came to 94. It was granted an order for possession of the property earlier this month.
June Moriarty, chief executive of the housing association, said: "The result is a victory for the community and, most importantly, for those directly-affected neighbours who can hopefully now return to living their lives in peace.
"This case demonstrates proactive hard work in tackling unacceptable behaviour by officers from BCHA, the police and environmental health.
The couple were jailed last July at Wolverhampton Crown Court after they admitted racially aggravated public order offences towards a neighbour but, after serving half of the sentence, the housing association continued to receive complaints about their behaviour.
The Deveys hurled a torrent of racist abuse at a neighbour from outside her home for two and a half hours in the middle of the night.
The couple were also fined £300 each and ordered to pay £514 costs each in November last year after admitting two breaches of a noise abatement notice served on them by Walsall Council.
The family, with three children under 14, told the Express & Star last year that they just wanted a quiet life, and that if anyone had knocked on the door to ask them to turn it down they would have complied.
