SAN ANTONIO — Renters in one Medical Center apartment complex claim they are dealing with the scent of death after their neighbor was found decomposed inside his unit.
While San Antonio police said the circumstances surrounding his death are not suspicious, the renters living in the building are concerned with the lack of cleanup.
“It was just horrifying,” Judy Brady Sertich said.
Sertich lives at the Sundance Apartment Homes off Gardendale Road. Last Wednesday, she said she smelled what she assumed was a dead animal.
“By Friday, we knew it wasn’t," she said. "So I emailed the office and said, 'You need find out what this smell is and by the way, could you do a wellness check on 608?'"
Two other renters in the same building said they smelled the same scent. They would not go on camera but said they both complained as well to the apartment management.
They said they received no response.
Sertich said she then decided to reach out to the city code compliance office.
“There’s no food going in and the man hasn’t come out,” Sertich said.
A city worker showed up on Monday. According to a police report, the worker could smell the odor by the front door and could see flies in the windows. The report states the apartment’s maintenance worker then used a ladder to get inside the apartment from the back patio door.
That’s when police said the worker discovered the 59-year-old renter, decomposed on his couch.
“From what I’m understanding, he had been dead for two weeks,” Sertich said, explaining the gruesome scene.
The local medical examiner took the victim’s body away and stated he died due to medical reasons. But the renters are more concerned that the apartment ignored their calls for a welfare check and that the apartment has still not been cleaned up by a hazmat crew.
“She said, 'Oh, we’re waiting to be contacted back,'" Sertich said. “No, you’re supposed to be contacting them.”
The renters claim the smell still lingers within the building and outside since the back patio door of the deceased man’s unit is open.
“How much worse can it get?” Sertich said.
KENS 5 spoke with the regional apartment manager in person Thursday afternoon and brought these concerns to him.
On Friday morning, the regional manager got back to KENS 5. He stated they have put out inquiries to have the apartment cleaned up but are waiting on companies to get back with them. He added, the biggest hazard in the apartment is the couch where the gentleman was found dead and the rest of the apartment is not hazardous.