A South Florida woman prides herself on keeping her home tidy. So when someone dumped an entire trailer full of trash on her yard, she called Help Me Howard with Brandon Beyer.<\/p>\n
Karen Shaw has lived in her Fort Lauderdale home for 25 years. She helped build it with Habitat for Humanity.<\/p>\n
Karen Shaw: \u201cIt\u2019s wonderful; you do so many hours on other people homes, then you do hours on your home.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s part of the reason she takes so much pride in her home and she says her neighbors do too.<\/p>\n
Karen Shaw: \u201cIf you have a yard that\u2019s not up to par, the house isn\u2019t going to look up to par.\u201d<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s hard to keep your yard up to par when someone comes along and dumps an entire trailer full of trash right onto it.<\/p>\n
Karen Shaw: \u201cIt looked like they had did some renovation and it was like shelves, boxes, a bunch of wood.\u201d<\/p>\n
A neighbor\u2019s security camera captured it all. The truck does a drive-by.<\/p>\n
Karen Shaw: \u201cIt looks like he passed by just to see was anybody out looking.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then he\u2019s back. And in about two minutes, he dumps his entire trailer full of trash on Karen\u2019s yard.<\/p>\n
Karen Shaw: \u201cYou can see the truck just coming up and all of the trash falls, he gets back in his truck and he pulls over and that\u2019s when everything just pours out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Karen couldn\u2019t believe it.<\/p>\n
Karen Shaw: \u201cI got some choice words but I\u2019m going to leave that for later.\u201d<\/p>\n
And as if this wasn\u2019t bad enough, the city sent Karen a violation notice telling her if this trash wasn\u2019t picked up, she\u2019d be fined. The video took care of the ticket.<\/p>\n
Karen Shaw: \u201cIt showed them that I was not responsible for that. Someone had illegally thrown that there.\u201d<\/p>\n
But she still had a pile of trash in her yard.<\/p>\n
Brandon Beyer: \u201cDo you think it should be your mess to clean up?\u201d<\/p>\n
Karen Shaw: \u201cNo, not at all \u2019cause I didn\u2019t dump it.\u201d<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s when she thought of us.<\/p>\n
Karen Shaw: \u201cI called Help Me Howard because Howard can get the job done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Howard, what a mess. If someone dumps trash on your yard, are you responsible for hauling it away?<\/p>\n
Howard Finkelstein: \u201cIn most cases, yes, you are responsible for maintaining your property. Karen is the victim of an illegal dumping and, unfortunately, it\u2019s the property owner\u2019s responsibility to remove the trash. The city can help if they choose, but they\u2019re not required to. If the perpetrator is caught and prosecuted, restitution can be part of the punishment.\u201d<\/p>\n
We emailed the city and though they don\u2019t have to, they told us the pile was scheduled to be picked up, because there was so much trash, the job required its own truck.<\/p>\n
The very next day, it was gone.<\/p>\n
Karen Shaw: \u201cAfter all that and all the calls and all the running around and calling this person and calling that person, they finally came out the exact next day and came to pick it up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Karen\u2019s got her yard back. With some brand new \u201cNo dumping\u201d signs letting people know they\u2019re on camera and that violators will be prosecuted.<\/p>\n
The city says they monitor for illegal dumping and they encourage residents to help them out by reporting it if they see it.<\/p>\n
Got a problem and need a hand? Here\u2019s how to find us below. It\u2019s Help Me Howard, I\u2019m Brandon Beyer, 7News.<\/p>\n
CONTACT HELP ME HOWARD Copyright 2026 Sunbeam Television Corp. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.<\/p>\n \tJoin our Newsletter for the latest news right to your inbox<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A South Florida woman prides herself on keeping her home tidy. So when someone dumped an entire trailer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":413411,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[249,251,250],"class_list":["post-413410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale-headlines","tag-fort-lauderdale-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=413410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/413411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Email: helpmehoward@wsvn.com<\/a>
Reporter: Brandon Beyer at bbeyer@wsvn.com<\/a>
Miami-Dade: 305-953-WSVN
Broward: 954-761-WSVN<\/p>\n