ATLANTA — Residents at a senior housing center say their building has become infested with bedbugs.
Errol Kelly told Channel 2’s Carl Willis that he got a rude awakening in the middle of the night and found bedbugs all over him in his apartment in the Baptist Towers.
"I could feel them crawling on me and I jumped up in the middle of the night and tried to see what it is," Kelly said.
He's not alone. Willis got a tip that bedbugs are running rampant through the senior apartments in southwest Atlanta.%
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Kelly says pest control came last week and identified the bedbugs.
"When he came in and pulled up the corner of the sheet you could see the bedbugs crawling along the corner of the mattress," Kelly said.
Kelly said he still sees the bugs. He was told it will be another week before treatment.
Willis contacted the owners, National Church Residences. They say there are 30 units with bedbugs and they're working to clean them out now.
"Some of the tenants won't say anything. Knowing them, knowing how timid, some of them are sickly. They'll just lay there and deal with that until they die, and it's really sad," said former Baptist Towers employee Sainabou Njai.
Njai said bedbugs were a problem when she worked there two years ago and says nothing has changed, due to inaction.
"It was something that could have been solved with a $7,000 treatment but they just never did anything about it," Njai said.
She said whole floors are infested in the building. A National Church Residences spokesperson insists they do a check every quarter and clear out problem areas. They told Willis they have a strong program to fight bedbugs.
"I'll believe it when I see it," Kelly told Willis.
Cox Media Group
