Scheduled eviction a no-go in Biddeford

BIDDEFORD – More than 100 people gathered Friday to watch the scheduled seizure of the home of a woman who had owed the city $27,000 in back taxes. But the deadline passed with no police action.

Dorothy Lafortune remained behind closed doors in her three-family house on Graham Street as the crowd gathered outside.

A militia that threatened to intervene on Lafortune’s behalf did not appear. The threat of violence to block the foreclosure had prompted a Roman Catholic school across the street to cancel classes.

Parents were notified the day before that classes at St. James School were being called off Friday, the deadline for Lafortune to leave the home.

For more than a year, Lafortune has waged a legal battle to keep her home. She claimed she was being targeted in retaliation for her local call-in show on the city’s public access TV station, which city officials had taken off the air.

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to halt the home seizure.

In October, the state supreme court ruled that Lafortune no longer owns the property, which was auctioned to Portland resident Tim Q. Ly for $80,000.

Floyd Shackelford, who was described as a state coordinator for the militia in Alabama, told Maine news reporters that the group was willing to defend Lafortune because she hadn’t had a jury trial. He said he didn’t want violence, but a message to his group’s members suggested that they surround the Lafortune house and be prepared to offer “direct fire support.”

On Friday, Shackelford, a computer programmer who ran for Congress in Alabama, said he was no longer involved with the Mutual Defense Militia. He also said the militia chose not to intervene. “We were never going to go to Maine unless Dottie’s life was in danger,” he told The Associated Press.

Two members of a white-supremacist group unrelated to the militia did appear outside Lafortune’s home to hand out literature.