Many of us have probably left an apartment in a less than pristine state while hastily moving out, but a woman in New Brunswick has trumped anything that even the worst tenants imaginable could possibly be capable of. In an interview with CBC, a landlord in Riverview recounted how a woman she evicted in August 2015 left behind rotting dead squid, shit of unknown origin(s) in piles and rubbed into floors, and hundreds of dead flies.In addition to this already bizarre list, landlord Susan Ostrow claims her previous tenant placed a quilt in the dryer of the unit along with two bags of milk and turned the machine on high, creating a "horrific" smell. As neighbouring tenants continued to complain over the next few days following the eviction, Ostrow tried to reconcile the sources spawning the symphony of bad smells within the apartment—including a dead squid left on a recliner—and made yet another discovery.
"My business partner happened to notice the medicine cabinet was cracked, so when we pulled the medicine cabinet out, there were the dead squid in the wall," Ostrow told CBC. The property damage done to the apartment is placed at $4,000 [€2,700 EUR]. Ostrow also said that that there was lewd graffiti on the walls and within piles of feces on the floor, she found a queen of diamonds card.
Though the landlord has gone to media in order to warn others, she has been unable to file a lawsuit after finding out that the woman, who was living in the unit with three children, used at least five separate aliases. Her real name is unknown. Ostrow contacted the person who her ex-tenant used as a reference when renting the unit in addition to hiring private investigators to locate her, but says she is no closer to finding the woman.
"I've given up, so I'm just trying to warn other landlords, but there needs to be a better system to protect landlords from stuff like this," Ostrow said.
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