CONWAY – Everybody used to come out to the aroma of barbecue hog cooked in Ella Bromell’s front yard.

The yard at her small ranch house near downtown Conway was full of life, packed with people standing around or sitting on her picnic bench and folding chairs and singing along to the radio.

The picnic table is long gone. The cauldron-looking grill has rusted. Bromell, 72, leans on a post of her front porch and clutches it tightly as if it’s going to fly away.

She knows more than most people the neighborhood’s history. She points to a street corner; that’s where someone was shot. Another house down the street; it burned down years ago. Right over there is where her parents raised her.

These days, she rarely leaves her yard. She said she lives in fear of losing her 1,000-square-foot home.

Show caption Hide caption The city of Conway twice attempted to shut down drug dealers on Ella Bromell's block by going after the elderly widow's home. Bromell said she... The city of Conway twice attempted to shut down drug dealers on Ella Bromell's block by going after the elderly widow's home. Bromell said she won’t leave. “I’m going to try to fight ’em with every inch of my life." MIKE ELLIS/Staff

She’s endured years of efforts by the city of Conway — first by forfeiture, then by foreclosure — to seize her house, an attempt to shut down drug dealers by going after Bromell.

For nearly a decade, Bromell has been hiding inside, curtains and blinds drawn. Her husband died a few years ago.

The former housekeeper blares her TV, listening to talk shows in the morning when she hand-washes her dishes. By 11 a.m., she’s planning dinner and supper and sitting in her wood-paneled living room, playing her word puzzles in pen.

Bromell doesn’t venture out much; she leaves primarily to greet her mail carrier at the curb and walks with a leaning gait that comes from decades of cleaning hotels.

If she wants to cook out, she has her niece pick her up, and they go a few blocks away. Away from her neighborhood, where she was born and raised.

Losing her home would’ve been the end.

“I would have killed myself or just die out,” Bromell said. “I don’t want to go nowhere else.”

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Court fights with Conway

It started in 2007 when people in her neighborhood were selling drugs outside of her home while she was at work or asleep. They sold in her yard or on her porch.

Bromell said she tried to get the people to stop selling drugs; she helped raise a lot of the neighborhood boys. She put up “No Trespassing” signs, and she talked to the boys and young men. She put up a fence. She trimmed bushes so passing police could see her porch easier.

Thurmond Brooker, Ella Bromell’s attorney “Little old ladies whose property is being trespassed upon can be victimized for a second time by someone seeking to take their property." Quote icon

Conway city officials told her it wasn’t enough, and in 2007 they petitioned to seize her home. Bromell agreed in a 2009 civil settlement to pay them $5,000 so she could keep her home.

Part of the agreement said that if anyone sold drugs on her property again, she would no longer be an “innocent owner” and could lose her house. She would have to pay $5,000 every time someone was caught selling drugs on her property and she could lose the house if she failed to pay.

Then, twice in 2011, neighborhood drug dealers were caught by undercover agents selling crack, small quantities of 0.3 and 0.6 grams, on her property. Bromell said it happened when she was away or asleep.

And that was enough for Conway city officials to try to seize her home.

“It's an extreme use of forfeiture,” said Thurmond Brooker, Bromell’s attorney. “It's being used in a way in which innocent people can have their property taken. Little old ladies whose property is being trespassed upon can be victimized for a second time by someone seeking to take their property."

Widow fights off town's attempt to seize her home Ella Bromell: Conway forfeiture fight keeps her indoors now, fearful of losing her home. “I don’t want to go nowhere else.” Lauren Petracca, The Greenville News

Brooker said the agreement was a bad deal that wouldn’t hold up to the weight of law. Drug deals have happened at other homes in the neighborhood, and he couldn’t understand why the city chose to target Bromell’s home.

"This agreement makes her responsible for the conduct of anyone who walks on her property,” Brooker said. "She was living alone. The police alleged that people would come on her property and do drug transactions. There was never any allegation that she was ever involved or had consented to this. This was all without her consent or participation."

The city defended its decisions to try to seize her property.

City administrator Adam Emrick wrote in an email that Bromell’s property was the site of (or near to) more than 100 police service calls from 2011 to 2014.

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“The City's intent in all of these actions was to protect the public from an extremely hazardous situation and to stop the increased and disproportional demand for police services at the address,” he wrote. “It was unfortunate that the City was forced to seek such an extreme remedy in the Bromell matter as to sue to seize and remove the property from its owner: It would have been preferable if the owner had independently recognized the issues and voluntarily made necessary changes on her own. However, the City has an obligation to the neighbors and the general public to promote a peaceful atmosphere and to maintain community standards.”

In a written opinion in 2017, Judge William Seals Jr. was unsparing.

The evidence against Bromell, he wrote, “consisted of less than a handful of minor drug transactions, shots fired at the residence and an abundance of calls to law enforcement of suspicious activity. Law enforcement … failed to produce any evidence that the residence was an integral or otherwise fundamental part of illegal drug activity or that the defendant had any actual knowledge of the criminal drug activity taking place at the residence.”

The city’s then-police chief Reginald Gosnell and then-city manager Bill Graham had testified. Seals said Bromell’s home may have been a nuisance and the neighborhood may be “drug-infested” but there was no reason to attempt to seize a home over minor drug charges that didn’t implicate the homeowner.

But despite the clear verdict, Bromell still doesn’t feel at ease in her own home.

The city could try to seize it again someday.

Emrick, the city manager, said the city has contemplated future seizures.

“Similar court actions would be employed if any property owner was not responsive to cooperative efforts to quell extreme and persistent disturbances to peace in the community,” he said.

Bromell said she won’t leave her home. “I’m going to try to fight ’em with every inch of my life."

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The TAKEN investigation series

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