A sleeping woman was awakened by what she thought was water droplets hitting her face. When she opened her eyes, however, she found herself in a nightmare as she quickly realized that she was not only covered in blood but her bedroom walls were splattered with it as well.
Ana Cardenas was sleeping in her Cielo Vista Apartment in east El Paso, Texas when she was awakened at approximately 4 am by wet drops hitting her face and what sounded like rain dripping. After turning on the light to investigate the sound, however, Cardenas was left horrified as she realized it wasn’t rain or water that had awoken her.
To her utter shock, Cardenas discovered it was blood, and it was everywhere. It looked like a crime scene with blood splattered across the bedroom walls, her bed, and even her own body. For a moment, she assumed she must still be asleep and stuck in a terrifying nightmare.
“It grossed me out, I was in shock, I thought, ‘This isn’t real. This is a dream, wake up!'” Cardenas recalled, according to a translation by KTSM. “I called maintenance, and they said are you sure, and I said blood is falling on me.”
Ana Cardenas was right. It was blood, and it was coming through her ceiling before being sprayed across the room by her ceiling fan. After seeping through the ceiling just above Cardenas’s bedroom fan, which she had on while she was sleeping, the blood traveled towards the spinning blades of the fan, causing the splatter on her bedroom walls, her bed, her furniture, and even her hair.
After making the gruesome discovery, 911 was called. First responders arrived at the scene and soon realized the blood was coming from Cardenas’s upstairs neighbor’s apartment. Sadly, the man who lived there, who was reportedly between the age of 55-70, had died of natural causes, according to police, and his body had been decomposing on the floor of his apartment for five to six days.
“The firefighters knocked down his door and the body was lying exactly where my fan is underneath,” Cardenas explained. “He had carpet but the blood seeped through to my ceiling,” she said, according to NY Post. “They took the fan down and a pool of blood came down.”
Realizing that blood from a decomposing body had not only covered her room but her face and body as well, Ana Cardenas was left traumatized and unable to eat, sleep, or just be in peace since the harrowing incident. Sadly, things were far from over. After staying in a hotel for a few nights, Cardenas was forced to battle Cielo Vista Apartment management for compensation for her damaged property.
“I told them my bed is covered in blood, and they told me they’re sorry but the insurance won’t pay it,” a distraught Cardenas said.
Unfortunately, she did not have renter’s insurance since it was not required. Although her apartment had been disinfected, flies and a foul smell still lingered when the KTSM 9 News crew walked through the residence.
Cardenas did not renew her lease, which was up after living at the Cielo Vista Apartment complex for a year and eight months, but she has struggled to find an apartment in her budget. A GoFundMe campaign was started in hopes of helping Cardenas recover the loss from her damaged property.
Meanwhile, Cardenas needed medical testing to ensure she hadn’t contracted an infection or disease from the decomposing body’s blood. “It was awful, an awful impact,” Cardenas said. Awful, indeed. Cardenas was left without a bed, along with other personal items that had blood on them, because those items need to be disposed of due to the potential for diseases such as HIV or hepatitis.
While we empathize with the horrific ordeal Ana Cardenas has had to face, her story does provide a valuable lesson: It’s important to always have renters insurance, whether it’s required by your landlord or not.
“Renters insurance covers the person that is renting the property, personal belongings, and you can also include any kind of medical,” El Paso insurance agent Miguel Reyes explained. “The landlord insurance might cover some stuff, but not necessarily that type of risk. In this type of situation, it is very important because if there’s any damages inside the rental property, she might be responsible for those damages, it might have to come out of her pocket.”
There is something else we could possibly learn from this too. Perhaps, it’s good to know, check up on, and watch out for your neighbors. What Ana Cardenas faced was undeniably traumatizing, but it’s equally tragic to think that a man laid dead in his home for nearly a week without anyone noticing until his body was so badly decomposed that it’s literally leaked into the apartment below. Had anyone missed him for even a moment, he could have been discovered and put to rest before his neighbor was forced to wake up to a real-life nightmare.
Source: Tap Worthy Happenings
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