‘We have the wrong house.’ Watch video of deputies mistakenly serve eviction in Florida

A shocked-sounding woman confronted sheriff’s deputies through her home’s Ring doorbell camera when she saw them serving an eviction notice at her front door in Florida, video shows.

“What are you doing?” she can be heard saying in the video, which she shared on TikTok.

The video shows a man drilling into her lock as sheriff’s deputies stand by.

“We’re here to finalize the eviction,” says one of the deputies, who is with the Pasco Sheriff’s Office in Land O’ Lakes, about 20 miles north of Tampa.

The woman, Jennifer Michele, sounds confused and upset when she tells them through the Ring camera that she’s caught up on her bills and that her dogs are inside.

“Nobody has served me an eviction notice,” she can be heard saying. “What the (expletive) is going on?”

After a few seconds, the deputies realize their mistake.

“We actually, we do apologize,” one says after consulting with another deputy. “We have the wrong house. It was the next-door neighbor’s.”

He then tells her that they will have to repair her lock.

Michele told WFLA that she got a Ring doorbell alert on July 28 while she wasn’t at home.

“I just think – if I didn’t catch it, would all my stuff be in the driveway?” she told the outlet. “I don’t know. I don’t know how it would’ve played out if I didn’t catch it.”

Michele did not respond to a request for comment from McClatchy News.

A spokeswoman for the Pasco Sheriff’s Office told McClatchy News that deputies were investigating how the error occurred. The man who drilled Michele’s lock was not an employee of the sheriff’s office, but a representative of the home rental company, the spokeswoman said.

Michele shared the video on July 29, and it had garnered more than800,000 likes and 6.7 million views as of Aug. 3.

In a follow-up video posted on July 30, Michele said that when she got home on July 28, she found the deputies at the home of her neighbor, who was being evicted.

“What if I didn’t have a Ring? What if I didn’t check my Ring?” she said. “What if I was out of town? ... I could’ve came home from lunch and my key wouldn’t go in the lock and I would have no idea why.”

Michele said she didn’t expect the initial video to go viral and that, while some commenters suggested she press charges, she didn’t plan to.

“The officers did apologize,” she said. “They bought me and my mom and my daughter lunch, which was a very nice gesture, they didn’t have to do that. Everything’s fine.”

This story was originally published August 3, 2022 at 4:16 PM with the headline "‘We have the wrong house.’ Watch video of deputies mistakenly serve eviction in Florida."