Family's apartment infested with flies

HOUSTON (FOX 26) - The outside of the Residence at Garden Oaks looks nice and just like any other apartment complex.

That's until you get into apartment #84 where Felecia and Bryan Davis live with their son. They're two military vets who thought the unit at $1400 a month would be a fresh start.

Davis says, "I'm not going to pay my hard earned money to live with flies."

If you go upstairs in the Davis' living quarters you will find hundreds, and I do mean hundreds, of dead and living blow flies infesting their apartment.

The couple also says there is an absolutely putrid smell coming from inside the walls in the upstairs closet.  They believe that's where the flies are coming from.

"Ever since February we've been trying to tell the apartments there's something that's been crawling in the walls I heard it scratching and they would never come and look and next thing you know we started smelling something," says Davis.

The couple said an exterminator came last month but the flies are still there...The obvious question - why won't they just leave?

Felecia Davis says, "I can't leave because I'm a veteran and my husband is a veteran and we have broken leases and his PTSD."

The Davis' said when they complained recently management at Garden Oaks told them they had 10 days to get out.

The Davis' responded by refusing to pay their rent on May 1st on the advice of their attorney Jolanda Jones.

Jones says, "I want for them to withhold rent. We're going to fight over that rent and who deserves to keep and whether my client should get their security deposit back."

Jason Fowell, an attorney for Garden Oaks, says exterminators have visited the Davis' apartment once in March and then in April.  He says since the couple hired their attorney they're refusing to allow crews into their unit to address the problem.  Fowell says in the meantime, workers have taken the initiative and drilled holes in the roof of the unit to pour lime into the walls to eradicate whatever it is attracting the flies. 

The Davis' attorney Jones doesn't deny that saying management should only talk with her now. 

We'll tell you if this problem is resolved.