This post has been updated.

A woman in Northeast D.C. was evicted from her home today despite a last-ditch attempt by members of Occupy D.C. to prevent it from happening.

About 50 demonstrators assembled at 8 a.m. outside the house at 917 Maryland Avenue NE to try to prevent U.S. Marshals carrying out an eviction order against Dawn Butler. Following an hourlong rally on the front steps, U.S. Marshal officers began pulling the protesters down along with a makeshift barrier that had been erected to block the house’s front door.

Members of Occupy D.C. recalled the ensuing scene as violent and “ugly,” with some reporting they were bloodied and bruised when being dragged off the front steps. One demonstrator, identified only as Mark, was knocked unconscious and carried to the curb where he laid until an ambulance arrived after about 10 minutes.

“They were pulling and grabbing and carrying people,” said Melissa McByrne, one of the organizers of Occupy Our Homes, an Occupy D.C. effort that seeks to prevent evictions caused by bank foreclosures. The tactic, when employed, has also been Occupy D.C.’s highest-profile activity since the economic protest movement was largely removed from its McPherson Square base camp in February.

McByrne said she was injured when officers moved in. The Metropolitan Police Department was also on scene during the eviction.

Butler had been the object of a previous demonstration by Occupy D.C. when she was facing eviction in April. She received a stay following a protest by about a dozen occupiers. But that stay was lifted on May 24 and an emergency appeal for a new stay of eviction was denied yesterday, according to D.C. court records.

Butler started renting the house in 2006. The property was foreclosed on by JPMorgan Chase in 2009 and, under the terms of her rental agreement, Butler was permitted to make a bid, which she and her mother, Anne, offered in spring 2010. But Dawn and Anne Butler said earlier this year the offer never received a response.

But Butler had been living in the house under an agreement with the previous owner in which she would forgo monthly payments in exchange for making improvements on the property. Anne Butler told DCist earlier this year that they had spent about $250,000 making substantial improvements to the home since 2006.

However, judges in both D.C. Superior Court and D.C. Court of Appeals found that Butler was living without a lease and thus did not qualify as a tenant, and thus had no rights with the new owner after the 2009 foreclosure, a spokeswoman for D.C. Courts told DCist today.

During the demonstration, protesters constructed a blockade using milk crates and chains attached to the front door. Following the dissolution of the human barrier, officers removed the temporary obstruction which caused the front door to become unhinged. Viewed on a live video stream, the scene appeared chaotic, with some protesters making themselves prone and forcing officers to haul them away from Butler’s front yard. Although some demonstrators were briefly handcuffed, there were no arrests reported.

Dawn Butler and Anne Butler participated in the protest, but were unavailable for comment. The area outside Dawn Butler’s former residence at time resembled a riot zone, with some officers from the U.S. Marshal’s carrying M4 automatic rifles and others with electronic stun guns at the ready.

Once the house was open, a moving company started emptying out the contents of Butler’s home and carrying them to the curb. Members of Occupy D.C. said they would try to hire a moving truck to take Butler’s possessions to a storage facility. Time would be precious in this process, McByrne said, as the moving crew placed an entire house’s worth of personal belongings on the open sidewalk. Some of the Butlers’ possessions were reported damaged, such as a collection of sake glasses.

“[Butler’s] life is in garbage bags on the street right now,” Byrne said.