Rats gnawed, disfigured Macon woman’s toes as she slept in ‘infested’ duplex, lawsuit says
A 69-year-old Macon woman’s toes were permanently disfigured by biting rats as she slept earlier this month in a rented duplex off Napier Avenue, according to a lawsuit filed Monday against her landlord and property manager.
The woman, Daphene Tyson, who already suffered from a medical condition that prevented her “from feeling sensation in her feet,” was asleep when rats in the house “approached her sleeping body and began to gnaw on the flesh and bones of (her) toes,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit, filed in Peach County where one of the defendants resides, goes on to claim that the result of “the gnawing” may lead to the amputation of one or more of Tyson’s toes.
Tyson’s attorney, Reza Sedghi, told The Telegraph by phone Monday that his client’s wounds were “brutal.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Sedghi said. “It’s a really sad, sad case.”
The lawsuit contends that Tyson and her husband began living at a duplex at 1020 Radio Drive last May and soon discovered the place infested with mice and rats. The couple informed the property manager “immediately,” who failed to remedy the problem, the lawsuit states.
Then on April 2, while Tyson was asleep, she was bitten by rats, according to the lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages to “compensate (Tyson) for her injuries.”
This story was originally published April 18, 2022 at 4:44 PM.