In April, the couple began finding the bugs around their apartment and notified the management company, who sprayed the home to get rid of the spiders. But their efforts didn’t seem to help and, in June, 25-year-old Wright was rushed to the ER after waking to find her arms and chest covered in small spider bites.
“All they said was, ‘Yeah, sorry to hear about that.’ They sprayed and that didn’t really help our situation,” Owen tells PEOPLE of management company at Views of Brentwood apartments. “We even took three brown recluse spiders to them. We told them at that moment we wanted out.”
Owen adds that officials have been “difficult and not understanding.”
Officials with neither Views of Brentwood nor their parent company, Brookside Properties, immediately responded to a request for comment from PEOPLE.
Victoria Owen
After the bite, the couple moved from the apartment into Owen’s father’s home. But the ordeal wasn’t over. Owen previously told PEOPLE that the management company initially required a 60-day move-out notice and that they pay at least $2,200 to terminate their lease. They’d be able to move out of the infested apartment on Sept. 1.
However, Owens says that she and Wright learned on Monday that officials had found a new tenant to take over the home, allowing the engaged couple to move out at soon as this weekend. Still, they are responsible for paying nearly $1,200 before leaving.
“We are happy that we are out, but who knows what’s going to happen to the next people,” Owens says.
Wright previously told PEOPLE that she nearly suffered a stroke from the spider bites and suffered blood clots.
“I wasn’t able to walk, I wasn’t able to take in deep breaths … [Doctors] said I shouldn’t have kids, because I could form another clot,” she said. “I didn’t want to recognize that I was in danger. I lost hope; I felt like I lost a battle. I’d been trying to keep the spiders away.”
Bites from brown recluse spiders can cause severe, skin-destroying lesions, according to theCenters for Disease Control and Prevention.
The spiders’ venom contains a neurotoxic component, according to thePenn State College of Agricultural Sciences. This can cause fever, bloody urine, jaundice, rash, convulsions and, in rare cases, death.
Owen says the ordeal has left the couple stressed and overwhelmed. But the hardest part, Owen says, has been to see Wright “lay in a hospital bed in horrible pain and not knowing what’s going to happen next.”
As for Wright, she says she regrets living in the infested home for so long.
source: people.com
