MILWAUKEE — Maggots are infesting one woman's Milwaukee apartment. Pictures and videos show dozens of maggots that neighbors said were falling from the ceiling.
Watch a Milwaukee County meeting live on Wednesday regarding the maggot incident. Click here for more info.
"I'm highly, highly, highly upset. I didn't put the maggots in here, I don't pay rent for maggots, I didn't do this," Sherlonda Carter said.
Carter's apartment is typically very put together, clean, and organized. However, last Tuesday, things took a turn.
"I was in the shower and one fell. As I turned around, I saw one going across the wall. As I rinse off in the shower, and I look down, and maggots are in the shower with me. There's maggots on my rugs in the bathroom, then I go out into the hallway of the bathroom, and maggots are on the carpet," Carter explained.
Carter said she thinks the larva came from the apartment above her. In June, that tenant was found dead in a car behind the unit.
"I've never seen nobody go up there and clean the apartment. The smell has been going on for a while. We done emailed, we called, they didn't send anyone out here," Carter said.
Carter said when the maggots showed up last week, she tried to get in touch with her management.
"The day I called, the day I went up to the office, all this was the same day. Called twice, went up there," Carter added.
On Friday, Carter said the maggots were so bad she had to borrow money from a friend to hire a professional cleaner.
"I'm more than frustrated," she said.
The apartment is subsidized through Milwaukee County. We called the county's housing assistance case manager for answers. In an email to us, a county spokesperson said:
"We take these complaints very seriously. As soon as our Housing Services team was made aware of the situation, we reached out to our contact for that landlord, asking the situation be immediately addressed, even making recommendations on calling a cleaning service. We also encouraged the tenant to call the City of Milwaukee Department of Neighborhood Services (DNS), who, from a code enforcement perspective, can hold the landlord accountable. If the tenant has been in contact with DNS and the unit isn't up to Section 8 inspection standards, additional action will be taken by potentially withholding rent or moving the tenant."
We tried calling Berrada Properties, which manages Carter's building, on Tuesday. No one answered the phone, so we went to their local office.
Employees there told me to contact the company's owner, who also wasn't there, so we sent an email.
"I cried for like a day like somebody died. I can't sleep, I'm having dreams, nightmares that maggots are crawling on me," Carter said.
An hour before this story aired, Berrada Properties emailed us back saying it dispatched an exterminator to treat the issue. We're in touch with Carter to make sure her apartment is taken care of.
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