Condo Wars: Disputes explode into violence, arson — and even murder

Ron Hurtibise, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Updated ·19 min read

Third in a series of articles investigating life under the rule of condominium and homeowners associations in Florida.

Living in a homeowner or condo association can drive some people to extreme behavior they would never otherwise contemplate — from corruption and fraud to assault and, even, murder.

Take this case in Stuart last year: Hugh Hootman, 75, shot and killed his HOA president and her husband following an argument over Hootman’s failure to keep the laundry room door closed.

In 2020, the manager of a Boca Raton condominium became angry after an 80-year-old homeowner objected to his rough treatment of a neighbor who began filming an association board meeting with her phone. The manager pushed the woman into a chair, twisted her arm and broke two of her fingers, according to a police report.

And in 2014, an emergency room doctor living in an upscale gated community in Boca Raton attacked a security guard who was delivering a citation to the doctor for working outside his home after hours, police said.

They are disputes spawned by the inherent tension created when homeowners’ rights and expectations clash with their associations’ ruling boards that, due to weak state oversight and regulation, operate with near autonomy.

In Florida, homeowners can be forced to pay for years of litigation to exercise their rights to see their community’s financial records. Their demands for annual meetings and open elections, required by the state’s Condominium Act, can fall on deaf ears. Legal challenges must be heard in nonbinding arbitration, and favorable rulings can trigger costly appeals.

A South Florida Sun Sentinel investigation found a broken way of living that can leave whistleblowers unheard, give unchecked power to untrained volunteers, and create an environment that sometimes decays into violent clashes between neighbors.

It’s a system designed to favor ruling boards.

And it’s inescapable: Nearly half of all Florida residents live under some type of owners’ association. And most new subdivisions and condominiums built in Florida today are governed by community associations.

Many residents move into them after having lived most of their lives in traditional communities that are governed by municipal governments where personal liberties rule, said Elizabeth White, a longtime community association attorney in Virginia.

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“These folks don’t realize what they’re doing when they buy into one of these neighborhoods,” White said.

When they move into an association-ruled community, owners waive many of the rights and liberties they’ve come to expect, she said.

“The act of accepting a deed to your lot or your condominium unit, just by accepting that deed, you are accepting all the contractual obligations and limitations and restrictions that run with the title to that lot or unit,” White said.

Two killed over request to close laundry room door

Those obligations can be costly and complex — like maintenance requirements.

But they can also be mundane and effortless — like being required to keep the door to the shared laundry room closed.

Hugh Hootman pleaded no contest in April to shooting and killing Ginger Wallace, his neighbor and president of Cedar Pointe Condominiums in Stuart, and her husband Henry days after the husband admonished Hootman about his failure to close the door of the complex’s laundry room.

Hootman told police he confronted Henry after the dispute last December and demanded an apology. Henry tried to walk away, but Hootman pulled a 9mm pistol from his pocket and shot him twice in the chest. When Ginger ran out and started screaming, Hootman fired two bullets at her, killing her too.

“I lost my temper,” Hootman told deputies after the shooting. Rather than enjoying his retirement, he’s now spending the rest of his life in prison.

Sometimes residents lose their cool over enforcement of rules they see as unreasonable, like limits on when they can work around their homes.

Dwight Collman, the emergency room doctor, was charged with attacking a security officer serving a citation in his gated Boca Raton community after he was told he couldn’t work outside his home after hours, police documented in an arrest report.

In an interview with WPBF-25 News, the security guard said Collman began cursing at him when he tried to put the citation on top of the mailbox. A video showed the homeowner ripping up the citation, the news report said.

The security guard told Boca Raton police that Collman punched him in the chest, grabbed his cell phone and threw it in a bucket of water, according to the arrest report.

Police charged Collman with battery on a uniformed security guard, criminal mischief and robbery by sudden snatching.

He pleaded not guilty, and reduced charges of battery and grand theft were dropped by the state attorney eight months later after he agreed to conditions of pretrial release, including undergoing a mental health evaluation, avoiding contact with the victim, and a ban on alcohol, drugs and firearm possession.

Contacted by text message recently, Collman declined to speak about the events. “It was so awful, I’m not sure if I ever want to think about it or discuss it,” he wrote.

‘Red Flags’

White speaks to homeowner associations about ways to recognize “red flags” that can help them stop trouble before it happens.

Some homeowners are living in an “alternative universe,” fueled by disinformation, unfounded accusations, and conspiracy theories spread on social media apps like Facebook and Nextdoor by people trying for one reason or another to create disharmony.

The disruptors often have their own reasons for posting misinformation, including wanting to get on the board or attempting to discredit existing board members, White said. Sometimes it’s as simple as becoming upset that the tennis pro was replaced, so they make up a scandal to explain it, she said.

“There are people who are reading those, that information, who will then turn around and get very upset, and their anger can be directed against the board, the manager, the officers, committees of the association,” she said. That’s when trouble erupts.”

Sometimes, she said, “they start writing emails to the association manager or to the association offices saying, ‘I have a gun and I’m going to come into the office and I’m going to shoot everybody.’”

“We have to take these threats very, very seriously,” White says. “And the one time we don’t take it seriously, somebody’s going to actually shoot somebody.”

Power corrupts

It’s not only residents who can be triggered. Elected board members and hired managers can go too far as well, White said.

In a 2020 case, a Boca Raton condominium manager, Charles Cheleden, grabbed a cell phone out of the hands of a homeowner who used it to start filming an association meeting, according to a police report. After he twisted the woman’s arm, the report said, another homeowner, 80-year-old Marjorie Zanger, yelled, “Leave her alone!”

The report alleges that Cheleden then grabbed Zanger by both arms and pushed her into a chair. After visiting a doctor, she learned that her right hand’s ring and pinky fingers had been broken in the assault.

Cheleden pleaded guilty to charges of battery and battery on a person 65 or older, was sentenced to two years probation and adjudication was withheld, court records show. As part of his probation, he was ordered to attend a 12-hour anger management course, 30 hours of community service and have no contact with the two victims.

As of October 2023, he still had his Florida Community Association Manager license, according to a state professional license database.

Richard Marcelle, a board member of an Ormond Beach homeowner association, was arrested in 2019 after police said he pulled out his handgun and fired it into the ground while ordering three teens to leave the community pool.

The arrest report stated that the teens challenged Marcelle’s order to leave, pointing to a sign stating the pool was open until 10 p.m., and that it was not yet 10 p.m.

Marcelle told the trio that the homeowner association board had changed the time at its most recent meeting — but had not yet changed the sign, according to the arrest report.

After prosecutors declined to charge him on three counts of felony aggravated battery and dropped a misdemeanor charge of discharging a firearm in public, Marcelle sued the eldest teen and the mothers of his two underage friends for false arrest.

His suit claims that he was called by a resident to deal with three teens who had “jumped over the fence and were trespassing at the pool” and that the teens “falsely stated” he threatened them with the firearm and fired it into the ground nearby. He also claimed two of the teens became “confrontational, bumping their chests against his.”

Yet the Ormond Beach police officer who filed the charges watched the incident unfold on the association’s security video. His account, detailed in the police report, stated that the video showed the teens entered the pool area and never appeared violent or destructive. After Marcelle confronted them, the video showed him returning to his truck and coming back with a small, revolver-styled handgun cupped in his left hand.

One of the clubhouse cameras captured small debris particles which “appears to be the result of a firearm round hitting topsoil,” the officer wrote in his report.

Throughout the interaction, the teens “made no aggressive or violent advancements, postures or gestures” toward Marcelle, the officer noted.

The lawsuit was dropped — it’s not clear from court records why — after the eldest teen and his friends’ mothers all filed responses in court defending their actions and pointed to the officer’s description of events seen in the security videos.

Marcelle’s attorney did not respond to an email seeking comment about the case.

‘Condo commandos’

Some homeowners can get carried away by appointing themselves enforcers of association rules and provoking confrontations that can get out of hand.

Lisa Barreca, a Boynton Beach woman who volunteered to serve as secretary-treasurer of the Aspen Glen homeowner association in Boynton Beach, ran into opposition from her two fellow board members when she repeatedly suggested imposing fines for the most minor offenses, recalled the HOA president who served with her.

Eventually, her enforcement efforts would lead to bullets.

Barreca quit the board after just a few months but continued reporting neighbors’ violations, said Damien Ferraiolo, the HOA’s president and also a Delray Beach police officer.

Neighbors considered Barreca to be a “condo commando,” Ferraiolo said in a recent interview.

He told the Palm Beach Post that his wife had noticed Barreca on February 5, 2018 videotaping their eight-year-old son skateboarding on the cul-de-sac in front of their Aspen Leaf Drive home.

By the time Ferraiolo got home from work that day, police were responding to multiple gunshots inside Barreca’s home.

Barreca had shot her husband in his head, both arms, leg and middle back — and shot herself in her right thigh, according to a report of the incident.

The shooting stemmed from the couple’s argument over “HOA complaints,” the report said without further details.

None of the injuries was life threatening, and although Lisa Barreca was arrested on charges of attempted murder, the state attorney’s office opted not to prosecute after her husband declined to cooperate in its investigation, the Palm Beach Post reported.

A spokesman for the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office spokesman recently said he could not confirm the paper’s report because records of the arrest have been expunged.

In May 2018, three months after the shootings, the couple sold their house and left the neighborhood, Palm Beach County records show.

St. Lucie County public records show that the couple turned up there, and in July 2022, Lisa Barreca petitioned the court to have her last name changed.

Ignore them but they don’t go away

Judith McKay, a Nova Southeastern University associate professor who specializes in conflict resolution, says there’s plenty of ways boards and unit owners alike can prevent HOA disagreements from turning violent.

Boards should understand that unit owners become frustrated when they feel their opinions are not being heard or their questions are being ignored, McKay says.

“It’s like a little kid who starts off saying something and eventually is yelling it because nobody is paying attention to them,” she said.

A Coral Springs condo unit owner has been yelling for 10 years.

At Ramblewood East Condominiums in Coral Springs, 67-year-old Nissim Hassan has been arrested three times on charges he violated protective injunctions barring him from coming too close to his association’s president, Nicola “Nick” Damasceno.

Association board members and employees say Hassan has disrupted association meetings so often that they used to regularly call police to keep the peace.

The dispute has spawned a long list of court cases filed by both Hassan and the association.

Hassan said in a deposition that Damasceno once threatened that the association’s lawyers would leave him in financial ruin, whether or not he prevailed in numerous court cases that each has filed against the other.

The beef between the two goes back a decade, court records show. Hassan says that’s when he began suspecting Damasceno of wrongdoing, including, according to court filings, withholding financial records and colluding with the association’s law firm to ensure reelection of Damasceno and his allies to the association’s board.

In 2016, Hassan was charged with striking Damasceno in the face and pouring hot coffee down his leg, according to an arrest report by Coral Springs police. Although Hassan was not prosecuted, Damasceno convinced a judge to approve a restraining order to keep Hassan away from him.

Damasceno did not respond to a request to discuss the situation.

Hassan was recently arraigned on two new charges in the dispute.

Prosecutors charged him with battery for allegedly grabbing an association office worker by the throat and squeezing in July when she tried to block him from entering the gym without signing in. The arrest report said he denied grabbing the woman and was only trying to move her out of his way.

Prosecutors also charged him with violating a domestic violence injunction order in a separate incident in July for allegedly coming within 25 feet of Damasceno at the clubhouse in July. Damasceno said Hassan sat in his car and taunted the president with threats and profanity, according to the arrest report.

Hassan, in an interview with the Sun Sentinel, denied all of the allegations by Damasceno. He is also fighting lawsuits filed in 2016 and 2020 accusing him of causing damage to a unit owned by the association directly below his from leaks from his air conditioning unit or water heater.

In 2021, the association offered to settle the cases by purchasing Hassan’s condo for $110,000 in exchange for his promise to leave and never come back. The settlement offer included dropping pursuit of $98,750 in damages to the downstairs unit and to forego recovery of attorneys fees.

Hassan turned the offer down. “I like where I live, I’ve been there 33 years,” he said in a recent interview with the Sun Sentinel. “It’s a nice corner lot, covered by trees. They didn’t offer enough money to buy somewhere else, and why should I move?”

Litigation in both lawsuits continues.

In January, Seminole County sheriff’s deputies charged Marc Hermann with setting fire to his condo unit in Longwood. He told responding paramedics it was “an act of revenge against the homeowners association in charge of his property,” according to an arrest warrant filed by the state’s Division of Investigative and Forensic Services.

Civil court filings show a six-year dispute between Hermann and Crown Oaks No. 2, the association that governs his condominium.

It began in May 2017, when the association sent Hermann a notice that it intended to file a lien on his unit, and requested that he immediately pay $769. The amount owed included two unpaid monthly assessments of $324 each, a $35 returned check fee, and a $75 service charge.

A year later, the association claimed that Hermann’s bill had increased to $7,503 — $2,931 in missed assessments and $4,572 in fees and interest.

Those charges continued to grow, despite Hermann’s insistence that he paid all of his assessments and the association failed to credit them.

In a foreclosure auction last July, an investment company purchased the property with a winning bid of $82,000.

Hermann filed numerous objections in his effort to stop the property transfer.

When deputies arrived at the fire scene on Jan. 14, they found Hermann sitting on the ground, “mostly covered and draped in towels,” with blood on his face and right hand that he said was caused by a gun, according to the arrest affidavit.

“Hermann continued talking about a management company, advising they were responsible for what occurred,” the affidavit said.

The fire damaged three adjoining units in the building. Residents of two of those units told of hearing a powerful explosion, feeling the building shake, and smelling gasoline, the arrest affidavit shows.

Hermann still faces four felony charges of first-degree arson of an occupied residence. He pleaded not guilty in March.

Open dialogue can avert disaster

Sometimes, owners just want to know that their concerns were heard.

McKay suggests that boards can work harder to avoid letting owner grievances devolve into charges of violence and lengthy court fights by doing more to solicit ideas and opinions from residents. One idea is to schedule informal town halls between regular board meetings.

People “want to be a part of things,” she says. “The fact that somebody is not an elected board member doesn’t mean that they are, you know, a little dumb-dumb who has nothing to say. In fact, I posit the opposite: If more boards and associations really took stock of who lives there and utilized the experience that’s there, they would get a lot more done.”

At the very least, residents may walk away satisfied that they were heard and got their points across, she says.

“I find it interesting that boards sometimes want to shut down conversation,” she says, “oftentimes out of fear. They fear controversy. You’ll hear, ‘we’ll get out of control.’ They should be inviting more of it because then you have better ideas and people feel good. They walk away from a meeting saying, ‘I got to say my point and people took notes.'”

Holding social events, such as potluck suppers where residents share each other’s dishes, can help residents see each other as people rather than an abstract entity “we don’t like,” McKay said.

“It’s harder to dislike somebody that you know then somebody you don’t know because at least you get to know them and you want to say, ‘OK, I can be a neighbor, I’m not going to be a friend but I could be a neighbor.'”

Residents, meanwhile, can offer board members opportunities to better explain reasons for decisions they make, McKay said.

“Raise your hand and say, ‘I’m having a little trouble here. I’m hoping you can help me. Do you think you can speak more slowly?’ Because, you know, one of the most popular expressions if you want to get help, like if you are calling a company to complain about something, is to start with, ‘I hope you can help me. I need your help.’

Still, unit owners should assert their rights when boards purposely act to shield themselves from accountability required by state law, McKay says.

If a board refuses to have elections or annual meetings, or is making decisions that a unit owner believes is not in the community’s best interest, or if a unit owner believes that funds are being misappropriated, “you have a right to speak up and do something about it,” she says. “You just have to follow the law.”

But the Sun Sentinel investigation found that sometimes speaking up — even within the constraints of the law — can be a slippery slope.

Unit owners who speak out at meetings or in communications with the board, management, neighbors or even the media can be hit with expensive defamation suits, the Sun Sentinel found.

Calling the police is usually a dead end, as law enforcement refers complainers to the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation unless a violent or property crime was committed.

Owners who seek help from DBPR can find themselves targeted by boards with costly litigation. Seeking non-binding arbitration from DBPR doesn’t prevent association boards from appealing negative rulings through lawsuits against the unit owners who won the arbitration.

The lawsuits can be costly and can ultimately result in owners giving up or move out.

Attempts to pass laws to crack down on community associations that steal, cheat or threaten residents — and increase protections for unit owners — have been stymied by industry lobbyists, the Sun Sentinel’s investigation found.

With nowhere to turn for help, and the odds stacked against them, some unit owners feel they have no choice but to resort to violence.

“One of the biggest things that hurts people is failure to be heard and acknowledged,” McKay says. “If you do not acknowledge and hear people who are different, you’re disrespecting them. Nobody wants that, and at some point, people aren’t going to have any part of it.”

If you have a tip or information to share about condo or homeowner association issues, you can email them to hoaemails@sunsentinel.com.

Reporters David Fleshler, Danica Jefferies and Brittany Wallman contributed to this report.

Investigation: Condo Wars

Part 1: Condo and homeowner associations have used Florida’s defamation laws when critics speak up. Under the shadow government of a condo board or HOA, residents who suspect wrongdoing question the board, potentially at their own peril. Read the story.

Part 2: A South Florida homeowners association board ran its community like a racketeering enterprise, prosecutors say, threatening homeowners and embezzling millions. Is a new state law enough to stop this from happening again? Read the story.

Coming next

Part 4: The state agency charged with keeping condos honest is an overwhelmed, underfunded bureaucracy that regulates barbers, electrical contractors, hotels and veterinarians. Condo owners who suspect wrongdoing report long delays and frustrating encounters with the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation.