San Francisco sheriff says evicted 100-year-old wasn't living in apartment

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- Friday's eviction of a 100-year-old woman follows a long legal battle.

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Iris Canada was not home during the eviction. Her family members have not told her yet because they're worried the news could greatly impact her health.

Canada says she had no warning the eviction was going to take place, but Friday Sheriff Vicki Hennessy says Canada wasn't even living in the apartment.

Protesters confronted Hennessy outside her office in San Francisco's city hall with shouts of, "shame," demanding that she resign after deputies carried out a court order to evict Canada from her Fillmore-area home.

The battle over Canada's apartment has dragged on for months. The owners granted her life estate but things soured when they say she stopped living there full time and she refused to sign a document to allow the building to be converted to condos.

The threat of eviction sparked ugly protests by tenant rights groups. This week a judge approved the eviction and Friday the locks were changed.

"So they locked out a 100-year old woman," said activist Tommi Avicolli Mecca of the Housing Rights Committee. "They locked all her medication in the apartment. They locked her wheelchair in the apartment. The woman is locked out."

"We do not want to evict anybody," said Hennessy. "Especially someone who is 100-years-old."

The sheriff says she's following the court's order. "Throughout this whole process, she's been ordered services. It is my understanding from the very beginning she did not need or want those services because she is in the care of her niece," Hennessy told ABC7 News.

Her niece, also named Iris, denies this. "Who's responsibility is she now," she questioned. "How does she get her medication?"

She insists Canada has lived in San Francisco since the 1940s and says now, she's been left on the streets.

"What do we do now," said "This is a life or death situation and you have given her a death sentence of some sort," said Canada's niece Iris.

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She says the fight is not over and that their attorney is filing an appeal.

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