A South Side mother of three walked back into her apartment expecting safety.
Instead, she found strangers living like they owned the place.
Yanicee Miles, a 27-year-old nursing student, had already fled her Chicago home with her kids after repeated break-ins, including a kicked-in door two weeks earlier. When she returned with police, the house was a wreck: clothes piled on couches, shoes and trash on the floor, and three alleged squatters inside.
One was passed out on the couch. Two others, she said, were naked in her bed.
“They were naked in my bed,” Miles told local reporters after the March 15 encounter. “I work hard for my s---. I got three f---ing babies.”
Cellphone video circulating again this week shows officers in Chicago Police uniforms stepping through the cluttered apartment as Miles films and confronts the uninvited guests. “Y’all are wild, ’cause there’s no telling if y’all were the ones who broke into my crib two weeks ago,” she says on the tape. One occupant stirs only after cops announce themselves.
Police said the incident happened around 8:23 a.m. in the 2500 block of East 74th Street. Two people, Tamika Harvey, 46, and Macarthur Benton, 63, were taken into custody and charged with misdemeanor criminal trespass. It was not immediately clear why a third person was not detained.
Miles said she never expected to find anyone inside after the earlier break-in. “I did not expect to see nobody inside of my house at all,” she said. The mess and the occupancy left her unwilling to keep the bed. “Ain’t no telling what the f--- y’all was just doing in that bed.”
The case landed in a city already wrestling with squatters, fake leases, and the gap between a homeowner’s deed and what officers can do on the spot. Illinois tightened rules in 2026 to treat some illegal occupants as trespassers rather than tenants, but Chicago police have said they still need to verify who has a lawful right to be there before making removals.
Miles later described herself as traumatized and looked to relocate with community help. For a working mom who had already packed up her children and gone to stay with family, the message of the video is blunt: she called the cops, came home, and still found strangers asleep in her house.
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