Elizabeth Parker has had more than one thing go wrong in her Harlem apartment. There was water flooding down her walls. There were drug parties elsewhere in her building.
But nothing prepared her for the blood that fouled her apartment last month, according to the New York Post.
“I was lost for words,” she said. “This is like a real horror movie.”
Parker, 35, lives on 116th Street. Late last month, she came back from a walk with her dog to find a puddle of blood in the middle of the floor, while a flow of blood stained one wall. The Post posted a video that documented the scene.
I lived with my dead neighbor’s blood dripping into my apartment for 2 weeks https://t.co/qyVK8LoiVn pic.twitter.com/62ftDwoFQq
— New York Post (@nypost) November 12, 2022
“I don’t know what’s in the ceiling, I don’t know what I’m breathing in,” Parker said, noting that the air in the apartment was foul.
When police were summoned, they found that her 56-year-old upstairs neighbor had died three to four days before the blood began to seep into her apartment.
The man’s dog had started to eat the corpse, the Post reported that police told a friend of Parker’s.
Parker’s problems did not end there.
The Post reported that until it started asking questions this week, neither the developer, Genesis Companies, or the property manager, Concord Management of New York, had sent anyone to sanitize Parker’s apartment.
After they arrived on Thursday, Parker’s apartment flooded, with water pouring in from above, requiring a return trip for more repairs.
“We offer our condolences to the family of the deceased and regret any inconvenience for Ms. Parker,” a Genesis Companies spokesperson said, adding that Parker was offered a hotel room during the repairs.
Although Parker won the apartment in an affordable housing lottery, and only pays $904 a month, her complications with floods and neighbors has not made it seem like she won.
“You know what the saying is, ‘You get what you paid for,’” Parker said. “But nobody should have to go through this.”
As awful as Parker’s ordeal was, the mess was less than that suffered by Ana Cardenas, 58, of El Paso, Texas, who also had blood drip into her apartment in May 2021 when her upstairs neighbor died and his body was left alone for days, according to KSAZ-TV.
Cardenas had a ceiling fan operating in her bedroom just below where the blood was dripping, which meant everything in her apartment, including her, was covered in blood.
In September, a Brooklyn apartment house was the scene of a crime in which a 22-year-old woman was found dead after a security guard responded to a report of a foul smell in her Brooklyn apartment.
The security guard had been sent to the apartment after other residents of her building complained about the smell and said she had not been seen in several days, according to WABC-TV. He found two suitcases in the room that contained her dismembered body.
