The demolition of a Detroit house owned by Michigan state Rep. Sherry Gay-Dagnogo is under investigation after it was mysteriously torn down nearly two weeks ago with no record of who did it.

Gay-Dagnogo said the demolition of the west side house near the Brightmoor neighborhood should have never happened and likened it to a modern day whodunit because she hasn't received any answers about who is responsible for the mishap.

"I have a lot of questions," Gay-Dagnogo said in an interview Friday, adding that she didn't live in the home but was in the process of renovating it. "There's no record at all at the city, from what they can find so far, that has anything about my house being torn down. They have no idea. It's a mystery. I'm just taken aback and trying to process this. How could this happen?"

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The city of Detroit posts detailed information about every city or Detroit Land Bank Authority-contracted demolition that has occurred on its publicly available Open Data Portal.

The Free Press independently reviewed the city's data portal website and found no record of a planned or completed demolition of Gay-Dagnogo's property, at 14567 Minock St.

Detroit Building Authority Director Tyrone Clifton said in a statement that the demolition "was not ordered, directed or funded by the city."

"There also was no permit pulled by any private party for demolition at this address," Clifton said. "At this time, we are actively investigating to see if we can help determine who was responsible."

But it appears the city has no idea, yet, who tore the house down. Gay-Dagnogo said Monday she hasn't received an update from officials.

"It’s a hole in the ground," she said. "It’s clean. It was a professional company. It has an orange barricade around the big hole in the ground."

The house next door to Gay-Dagnogo's,14561 Minock, was demolished months ago on July 11 by Adamo Group, Inc., which was paid $22,000 for the job, according to city records. The vacant house was torn down after it was damaged by a fire.

Adamo, which is one of the largest contractors in the city's demolition program, previously faced suspension for tearing down the wrong home in May 2018, the Free Press reported.

When asked whether Adamo had been cleared of any wrongdoing in this instance, mayoral spokesman John Roach did not directly answer the question but instead reiterated "it's a matter under investigation."

Adamo has torn down 3,397 houses for the city, totaling more than $56 million in work, according to records reviewed by the Free Press.

The company's attorney, Christian Hauser, said "Adamo had absolutely nothing to do with the demolition of the structure at 14567 Minock."

Hauser said his client has a photo of the house still standing on July 30 when they performed a site visit after demolishing the home next door.

"My client indicated they would never go back and knock down another house like that just randomly," Hauser said.

"Any time one of our demolition contractors commits a serious violation, we act immediately to address it," Detroit Building Authority Special Projects Director Brian Farkas said at the time. In that instance, Adamo had "mistakenly knocked down a Land Bank-owned house at 5792 Holcomb that was also in the demolition pipeline but not the house under contract for demolition," Farkas said last year.

Gay-Dagnogo purchased the house last year through her nonprofit, Coalition to Integrate Technology and Education. Assessor records show the nonprofit purchased the house for $1,000 on July 25, 2018, from the Detroit Land Bank Authority.

The small, longtime nonprofit, which focuses on community engagement and education, had worked out an agreement with the Detroit Land Bank Authority, Gay-Dagnogo said, and planned to rehab the property this year. Gay-Dagnogo said they wanted to give the home to a needy family or transform it into an affordable housing property. The nonprofit owns another house in addition to the one that was demolished.

Her house, which was boarded up, sustained fire damage in mid-June after the vacant property next door caught on fire. The fire burned her roof and melted the siding on the side of her house that was adjacent to the property.

Gay-Dagnogo said she was informed her house was torn down by a neighbor late last week, who had left her home for several hours and came back and noticed the state representative's house was gone.

The neighbor knew Gay-Dagnogo was in the process of fixing the house up and she thought perhaps that the organization had changed its mind and elected to tear the home down.

But Gay-Dagnogo said that wasn't the case. She said she recently received a letter in the mail from a city inspector who went to the house on Sept. 14. The letter indicated that Gay-Dagnogo had until Oct. 14 to bring her house into compliance, by either rehabbing it or electing to demolish it.

Gay-Dagnogo said they elected to continue with their plans to rehab the property.

"Only to find out it was gone," she said. "It wasn't supposed to be torn down. My house was still standing; my house was boarded. We were waiting to get an assessment of what it would cost to restore it."

Gay-Dagnogo said she has since spoken with police who also could find no city records related to her home being demolished but are investigating what happened.

Gay-Dagnogo said she also spoke with Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, who assured her that he "was going to investigate and get to the bottom of it."

Gay-Dagnogo, who is in her third term as state representative of Michigan’s 8th District, has been a vocal critic of the administration's handling of the demolition program and recently posted a status on Facebook questioning Duggan's proposed $250 million bond that would tear down 16,000 homes across the city.

Duggan's administration officially submitted the bond to the Detroit City Council earlier this month. Total possible spending on blight removal, including funds outside the bond proposal, could be as high as $420 million, Duggan said. That would include another 3,000 houses that would be removed using federal dollars.

The city's demolition program has faced intense scrutiny in recent years for its practices and a highly publicized federal probe.

The federal investigation resulted in criminal charges in April against two former employees of a demolition firm, one of whom worked for the city of Detroit at some point.

Federal agencies have been probing various facets of the city's program over the past several years.

After the Free Press published a series of investigative stories about the program, congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Brenda Lawrence jointly called for increased oversight of the city's blight remediation efforts.

Gay-Dagnogo said her house being wrongly torn down has reinforced her opinion of the program, which she said she believes lacks enough protocols and safeguards.

"I've been vocal about the mayor and the quest for an additional $250 million," Gay-Dagnogo said. "And I have my concerns about the number of minority companies who have access to the program.But that was all based on what I've read and understanding what has happened to other people and just the dysfunction. But now? It further substantiates how I feel about the program and takes it to a whole new level."

Gay-Dagnogo said she recently drafted a resolution calling for more transparency over the city's demolition program, which the administration has fiercely defended.

But she said she's glad this happened to her and not a regular citizen.

"I just want to know what lies underneath," she said. "I'm very disappointed. What if this happened to a citizen who doesn't have the reach to have these conversations? What kind of hoops would they be put through to try and bring some resolution to them losing their home?"

Gay-Dagnogo said her nonprofit was looking forward to perhaps giving the home away to a family around Christmas but now it's gone.

"Instead of just boarding up the same houses, we figured we'd buy a couple houses and make an impact that way," Gay-Dagnogo said. "What if this was somebody who sunk in their money to try to move in a house? To be honest, that's what's very unnerving for me."

Kat Stafford is the Detroit government watchdog reporter for the Free Press, covering city issues and the community, and an Ida B. Wells investigative fellow with Type Investigations. Contact her at kstafford@freepress.com or 313-223-4759. m,