Judge orders ‘House from Hell’ demolished

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149 Arkansas St., slated for demolition. Photo by I’Jaz Ja’ciel.

The “House from Hell” will soon be a pile of rubble.

Following years of neighborhood complaints, Housing Court Judge Patrick Carney has issued a demolition order for 149 Arkansas St. — a run-down, vacant house used by squatters and drug users, where two dead bodies were found in 2022. 

Carney also slapped owner Kwayo Ithe Bonkuka with a $10,500 fine.

“I have had Council reports, block club reports. They’re still screaming,” Carney said of the property’s many complainants.

Carney issued the demolition order after building inspector Sean Myers testified during a trial last week that violations dating to the property’s initial September 2022 Housing Court appearance were never corrected. They include structural deterioration — missing walls and floors — as well as garbage accumulation and chipping paint. Meyers called the property a safety concern to the neighborhood, describing it as “vacant, wide open and a blight to the area.”

“It’s unfortunate that it has to come to this but, at the same time, relief,” neighbor Wilmer Peralta said of the demolition order. Peralta has been complaining about the West Side property to Niagara District Council Member David Rivera’s office since 2022.

Wilmer Peralta, West Side resident. Photo by I’Jaz Ja’ciel.

“On this block, the ‘House from Hell’ was the only house that didn’t have any tenants,” Peralta said.

Rivera, who was in court for the property in November 2022, said the demolition order was long overdue.

“I wish the process was shorter and decisions made a lot sooner,” he said. “In the meantime, there just was neglect and disinvestment, and the neighbors had to live through that, and so I wish the process would take a shorter time to reach a decision.”

Bonkuka, who has a Williamsville address but is said to be living in France, was not present for the trial. His attorney, Daniel Tarantino, attended and did not object to the demolition order. 

Bonkuka purchased the Arkansas Street house in March 2020 for $45,000, city records show. It will be the second of Bonkuka’s properties to be demolished. Earlier this year, the city tore down 58 Maryland St. after the vacant house caught fire twice within 60 days. City inspectors said that property was also used by squatters and drug users.

The Arkansas property was dubbed the “House from Hell” by Investigative Post in a December 2022 story detailing the problems the property was causing in the neighborhood. 

At the time, Peralta recalled a maintenance worker contacted police after finding a squatter living in the house. 

Police said they would do a follow-up visit, but they didn’t come back until nearly a week later, when Peralta called because the smell of what turned out to be a squatter’s decomposing corpse permeated the neighborhood, according to neighbors and police reports. Days later, another squatter broke into the house and was also found dead. Both deaths were suspected overdoses, according to Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia.

Investigative Post found that since 2019 police were dispatched to the property more than 100 times, the city wrote it up for three dozen code violations and Bonkuka wracked up nearly $8,000 in fines from the city’s Bureau of Administrative Adjudication.

Carney first threatened demolition of the property in October 2022 if repairs weren’t made within 60 days. By November, when the property returned to court, building inspectors noted that some work had been done. However, repairs had stopped by the summer 2023. The judge again threatened demolition in March and gave his final warning in May, when Bonkuka was given another 60 days to fix the house. That deadline led to last week’s trial.

The rear of 149 Arkansas St. Photo by I’Jaz Ja’ciel.

One week before the May hearing, neighbors called police to the property after squatters there got into an altercation and screaming from the house disrupted residents.

Rivera said the drawn-out case is typical of his experiences in Housing Court.

“It’s frustrating for the neighbors. It’s frustrating for the people that have to go to court and especially the people living adjacent to the properties,” he said.

Peralta said that while he’s grateful the house will be gone, other blight continues to cause problems for the neighborhood. A former Rite Aid on the corner of Arkansas and Grant streets, down the street from his home and Bonkuka’s property, has also become a haven for vagrancy, he said.

“It’s a garbage dump there. There are a bunch of people with mattresses and grills. They were all homeless individuals or drug users that were there, so I don’t know what’s happening with that, either,” Peralta said.

Unless the city does more to hold negligent property owners accountable, troublemakers in abandoned buildings will continue to cause issues throughout the city, he said.

“They’ll just move somewhere else, which is sad that other neighborhoods will experience what we’re experiencing. But the city needs to take better action on this, on owners who are not responsible for their properties,” Peralta said.

He’s also concerned about what will become of the land that 149 Arkansas St. currently sits on.

“I’m not sure what’s going to happen to the lot. The one thing I would hate is for it to become a garbage dump,” he said, adding that neighbors have discussed purchasing the land and possibly building a playground there.

As for Bonkuka’s other properties, his attorney, Tarantino, said in court that two houses Bonkuka owned on Hudson Street and Royal Avenue have been sold. Carney told the attorney to talk to building inspectors regarding fines on those properties and money that the city is seeking for the demolition of 58 Maryland St.

I'Jaz Ja'ciel