A broken stairwell at College Park Apartments in Collier County has one mother who lives at the complex worried for her daughter's safety, so she reached out to Fox 4 for help.
Elmie Joseph said that she and her daughter have lived in an upstairs unit at College Park for almost 3 years. Last Friday, a broken step on the stairs near their apartment made the stairwell unsafe.
"Anybody could fall from that," Joseph said. "They put up caution tape, but I don't know if the kids are playing...they're taking it down."
Joseph said that her daughter has a mental disability and is used to the routine of using that stairwell, caution tape or not.
"I have to run behind and be like 'no, you have to go around,'" she said. "And she gets frustrated about that, but I'm just concerned about our safety."
Joseph said that when the stairs weren't fixed by Wednesday, she talked to the apartment management, and was told that someone from their corporate office would call her. When they didn't get back to her by Friday morning, Joseph called Fox 4.
The property manager told us they couldn't initiate any repairs without approval from their parent company Richman Properties. When Fox 4 tried calling them several times for answers about the delay in fixing the stairwell, we left voice mail messages. None of the calls were returned by late Friday afternoon.
Joseph can't believe all the red tape in trying to fix the stairwell.
"Whether they had to get their team from wherever...or hire a company to come do it, it should have been done," she said. "It just doesn't make any sense to me that our kids are running around, and no one's taking care of the matter."
