GARLAND Many residents at a Garland apartment complex are sleeping on cots after bed bugs infested their mattresses.
Tenants say the bites are painful, and the bed bugs are hurting them financially as well.
One couple says this has been a problem for one month at Oak Creek Apartments in the 2700 block of West Walnut Street. Stacy Turner said he and his wife would sleep maybe one hour before being awakened by the bite of bed bugs.
It got so bad they had to throw out their mattress.
We had like a thousand bed bugs on our beautiful mattress and box spring, Turner said.
Stacy Turner and his wife are now just left with a bed frame after being bitten repeatedly. You can see the red marks on their skin where the insects had a field day.
It's horrible, said Stephanie Thornton. They wake you up in the middle of the night.
Nothing has worked to eliminate them. We tried to rub alcohol, hot shot, vaccumed every day, Turner said. It's an epidemic at Oak Creek Apartments.
Apartment management issued a letter to residents that says they have discovered that several apartments are infested with bed bugs.
But Turner and his wife want to know why no professional exterminator has been hired since they a certified letter to management on June 24, demanding the problem be fixed in 10 days.
So far, they haven't done anything, Turner said.
The Turners said they've been forced to toss their infested furniture in the trash, a loss of several thousand dollars.
This is their possessions they've lost, and for the managers not to even to attempt to do anything I don't know how they sleep at night, said Pamela Browning, Stacy Turner's mother-in-law.
To make matters worse, the Turners' apartment has no hot water to take a shower, making them feel dirty even though they've cleaned house in an apartment that no longer feels like home.
Apartment managers did not want to speak on-camera, but they told News 8 that treatment for the bed bugs will start after the holiday weekend. They said work on the hot water boiler could start Tuesday if the part needed to fix the problem arrives.
If the problems are not addressed soon, the Turners said they will move in August. But with no furniture, they are now in a holding pattern.
E-mail ddenmon@wfaa.com
