Federal housing officials said Tuesday that Denver’s Housing Authority lacked empathy and compassion when it forced a woman from her southwest Denver home three days after a gunman fatally shot her daughter there.
Relatives of Doris Kessler, 70, said she was given only a few hours’ notice that she would have to leave her home in the 2200 block of South Irving Street, where she spent more than a decade as her 47-year-old daughter Sandra Roskilly’s live-in aide.
Denver police say Daniel Abeyta, 31, killed Roskilly during a Friday rampage in which he used propane tanks to booby-trap the street. He also shot his wife, Autume Estrada, 26, in the leg.
Kessler’s son, Dennis Campbell, said the housing authority locked the house Monday and turned his sister’s belongings over to a public administrator. Roskilly’s only son would be heir to her estate, but he lives in a state group home.
“We would have hoped they would have given the family time to grieve and transition,” Housing and Urban Development spokesman Jerry Brown said.
Roskilly’s mother lived in the home to help her because she suffered memory problems.
Federal and state laws bar Kessler from living in the home because she was a live-in aide who does not have tenancy rights, Denver Housing Authority spokeswoman Stella Madrid wrote in a statement. Live-in aides sign an agreement acknowledging their status, the statement said. The public administrator must decide whether to allow Kessler to return.
“DHA has offered our condolences to the family of Ms. Roskilly and has offered to assist them during this transition,” Madrid wrote.
