Oh rats! Rodents take over Chesapeake storage facility

CHESAPEAKE, Va. (WAVY) — A woman renting a Campostella Road storage unit found a family of rodents living in her belongings and said the facility is infested.

It’s been a week since Keysha Murphy said she found a rodent infestation in her storage unit.

“It smells horrible in here,” Murphy told 10 On Your Side as she took us through the unit. “That’s the paper they were feeding off of right there.”

Murphy told us last week she got a call from the Life Storage manager, who thought she was calling another customer who rents next to Murphy’s unit.

“At first, she told me it was a squirrel problem,” Murphy said. “Then she was like, you know, thinking it’s probably, if it’s squirrels, then it’s some other rodents.”

When Murphy went to check on her belongings, she and her fiancé were horrified.

“Rat droppings everywhere,” Murphy said. “It was really, really bad.”

They sent us videos of rodents in their boxes and crawling on their stuff. Some were even dead and decaying.

“The rats were running up under all of these units here,” Murphy said.

Soiled pillows, chewed up blankets, ruined photos and poop everywhere.

“I’m looking at about $50,000 to $60,000 worth of damages,’ Murphy said.

While 10 On Your Side didn’t see rodents during the interview, we did see the droppings and poison used to kill them.

“It’s a public hazard,” Murphy said.

Murphy was outraged and reached out to Life Storage’s parent company, Extra Space Storage, about the problem. As of Tuesday, she told us she’s still waiting for a call back.

They did send 10 On Your Side a statement:

“Extra Space Storage prioritizes safety, security, and cleanliness at our locations.

“Our leases for renting self-storage units do specif[y] that perishable good[s] cannot be stored on our property – when a perishable good is stored in a unit it can attract rodents to that unit and potentially surrounding units. We just recently became aware of the new rodent situation like this at the property. Our team immediately began taking action to increase our pest control, adding additional vendor visits, and taking several approaches to eliminate rodents on the property.

“If customers had property damaged by rodents, the insurance we recommend during the rental process will cover losses due to rodent damage. We encourage all customers to purchase insurance during the rental process.”

“No movers, no public service announcement, just no care, and the sad part about it is, I would have never known if she didn’t call me by mistake,” Murphy said. “Everything that I worked so hard for is down the drain and the only thing people can tell me, they didn’t even tell me I’m sorry.”

She told us she wanted to share her story because she’d hate to see this happen to someone else.

“If you can,” she said, “check on your storage units as much as you possibly can.”

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