Cary Edwards thinks his neighbor, Atalalech “Tutu” Aberra, is trying to “take over” the neighborhood where they’ve both lived in Spokane Valley for years. There are four houses on the block, and Aberra has owned the one at the end of their drive since 2013, where she operates an adult family home and cares for up to four clients at a time with disabilities. Last year, she bought the next-door house, which sits between hers and Edwards’.
City documents say Aberra has the right to come and go over an easement that pavement bridges across Edwards’s property — as do the clients who come to her home for services like “personal care, housekeeping, activities, and group meals,” according to a website. But to assert what he said are his property rights, he installed three bollards — physical barriers that keep out large vehicles — blocking the strip of pavement Aberra uses to access her house.
The bollards have made it impossible for any vehicle bigger than a minivan to get to the adult family home. That’s a big problem for the Spokane Transit Authority (STA) paratransit vans her disabled clients sometimes need to get to work, appointments and social gatherings.
Edwards, who told RANGE he’s friendly with some of Aberra’s clients, maintains that STA vans and other traffic are ruining the blacktop on his property — and that he’s on the hook to repair the damage. There are some depressions that are visible when it rains and some cracks in the quarter-century-old pavement. Edwards said he hasn’t given the agency his permission to get to Aberra’s business.
Aberra, a Black Ethiopian-American woman, thinks Edwards is trying to make her life and work as difficult as possible because, she said, he’s “racist.”
Edwards scoffs at this because he has Black friends.
“She’s trying to take the whole subdivision here, and she’s upset that I’m not giving it to her,” Edwards told RANGE of Aberra, who’s lived in the Spokane area for decades.
They’ve been screaming at each other since last summer.
Yelling matches & litigation
Edwards moved the office of his motorcycle parts business home last year, and when he did he started noticing the depressions in the pavement. Blaming the depressions on the paratransit vehicles, which weigh about five tons, he started parking a large truck along the easement, which Aberra said blocked the traffic to her home and business. Though Edwards told RANGE his truck was not obstructing the easement, it sparked a series of tense interactions between Edwards and Aberra and their families. In an interview, Aberra accused Edwards of mocking her for being single. Police were called more than once.
On September 12, STA’s general counsel Megan Clark sent Edwards a cease and desist letter, demanding that he stop blocking the easement to STA vehicles.
During the most recent altercation between the neighbors, which took place on the road in front of Edwards’ home, Aberra accused Edwards of imposing “bad energy” on the neighborhood. She offered to “buy your house for cash right now,” according to footage of the incident recorded by Aberra and reviewed by RANGE.
“So that’s the way you are?” Edwards said in the video. “You’re from a communist country, and you feel like you’re an oligarch. You think you can buy the whole property and take over.”
Ethiopia has not been a communist country for 35 years.
Aberra called Edwards a “loser” and told him if he doesn’t like living in a neighborhood with Black people he can move out. Edwards asked if she would sit for a conversation with him about the central point of contention between the two neighbors: who will replace asphalt on the drive Edwards said is damaged by paratransit vans that go to Aberra’s adult family home. She refused and said the police were on their way.
Not long after the video was recorded, Edwards texted RANGE that Aberra’s ex-partner had instigated the incident, saying he “proceeded to cuss my wife out and call her some very explicit things.”
Edwards insists he is not motivated by the color of Aberra’s skin. He told RANGE it’s racist for Aberra to call him racist because that’s a stereotype against white people. Plus, he has a good relationship with his other Black neighbor, Henok Demoz, so he can’t be racist, he said in an interview. Demoz declined to comment on the dispute and his relationships with either neighbor.
When the city of Spokane implemented a rule barring federal agents from enforcing immigration law on city property, Edwards posted to his personal Facebook: “‘Immigration Enforcement Free Zones’ We call them prisons! Get legal or get out!!!”
He posted material generated by the European Sovereign Union, a far-right, anti-immigrant political party that recently took seats in the government of the European Union.
He also posted an AI-generated video of Black women in headcoverings counting large stacks of cash in a facility that looks like a day care. It’s a racist allusion to a right-wing fervor started during the last presidential election cycle by the boyish YouTube influencer Nick Shirley over fraud in some Somali daycares in Minnesota. (Some daycares appear to have engaged in fraud, including here in Washington, which has led to harassment against immigrant childcare providers, but there’s little evidence the problem is as big as Shirley made it out to be. Still, Shirley’s videos were weaponized by the right to demonize Black immigrants and helped instigate the Trump administration’s deadly crackdown on Minneapolis.)
Responding to questions about his posts, Edwards said he is concerned about illegal immigration but doesn’t have a problem with people who come to the US legally, like Aberra.
In February, after at least two verbal standoffs between the pair, plus Edwards’ installation of the bollards, and STA had sent its cease and desist letter, Aberra, through her lawyer Douglas R. Dick, filed her own cease and desist letter demanding he remove the barrier. Edwards did not.
Spokane Valley City Manager John Hohman, who fielded calls from Edwards, said it’s unusual for someone to install barriers to prevent access to their neighbor’s property.
“I’ve never heard of anyone going that far,” Hohman said, referring to the bollards.
In an interview, Dick echoed Hohman.
“This is the first time I’ve seen someone go to such lengths to put up infrastructure to stop people from enjoying their property,” Dick said.
On March 12, Aberra sued Edwards in Spokane Superior Court, asking it to order Edwards not to “obstruct, gate, narrow, or otherwise interfere with Plaintiff’s rights under the Easement [the strip of land connecting Aberra’s property to the main road].” STA joined the litigation, asking the court to explicitly allow its vans to access Aberra’s business.
The lawsuit also asks the court to prevent Edwards from blocking the easement, to declare that Aberra can use the easement as she always has, to force Edwards to remove his bollards and to promise not to obstruct it anymore.
According to the suit, “the bollard in the middle of the driveway easement is not just a nuisance; it creates multiple traffic problems by narrowing and blocking the full travel path, increasing conflict points and collision risk with the bollard and Defendants’ residence, reducing turning radius for larger vehicles, impeding two-way flow and emergency service access, and creates a strike hazard for anyone unfamiliar with the driveway.”
“We just want to be able to provide transportation to our folks,” Delana Combs, the ombudsman for STA, said in an interview.
In documents he filed with the court countering the lawsuit, Edwards accuses Aberra of defamation for calling him racist. His filings say the city does “not permit business-related traffic or commercial use.” He accused Aberra of “misrepresenting her property rights” and STA of trespassing and asked the court to ban STA from accessing Aberra’s property without his permission.
Spokane Valley planning documents say maintenance of the easement is not the city’s responsibility, but they do not spell out whose it is. Edwards said he has no problem with the actual business Aberra runs, only the public services to that business. Aberra has a permit for her business.
Records show STA officials have had multiple run-ins with Edwards, including one that said Edwards “showed hostility towards an STA employee.” In September, an STA official contacted the Spokane County Sheriff to report that Edwards was harassing paratransit workers. In response to the cease and desist letter filed as evidence in Aberra’s lawsuit, Edwards denied having harassed anyone.
Spokane Valley documents designate Aberra’s as “the dominant property,” meaning she can use it to get between her home and the street. Hohman told RANGE the city’s documentation “doesn’t contemplate group homes,” like Aberra’s adult family home. But the lawsuit notes that the easement has historically been used for paratransit, and the documents give Aberra the right to use it to enter and exit her property.
Edwards said that language does not include vehicles that are too heavy for the easement and that he should not be responsible for any damage caused by the STA vans. He insists STA needs his permission to get to Aberra’s door.
The morning of April 1, Edwards texted RANGE that he had not seen the vans for a long time and removed some of the bollards. But he said he would put them back if more paratransit vans showed up. The afternoon of April 2, he texted again, saying a van had used the easement, so he reinstalled the bollards.
“Bummer, oh well,” he wrote.
In an hour-long conversation on April 17, just before we published this story, Edwards repeated that he is not concerned with Aberra’s business or even the STA traffic. He said he’s fighting for all Washingtonians who are not represented by the state’s stance on easements. He said he doesn’t care much about the paratransit vehicles, and though he finds them “annoying,” it’s the principle of the matter. Private property owners are victims.
”She threatened to buy my house,” he said. “It's not just me — it's properties all over Spokane Valley, maybe all of Washington state, that are dealing with the same issues of their properties being taken advantage of.”
For Aberra’s part, she said she just wants to get her clients the access to the transportation they need.
The two are due to appear at a hearing on April 24 in Spokane County Superior Court. Edwards is looking for a lawyer to represent him but said he can’t find anyone who has not represented STA. Clark has been STA’s general counsel since at least 2022. Edwards told RANGE he’ll comply with whatever a judge orders in the case.
