An El Paso woman woke up in the middle of the night to blood dripping from her ceiling fan and splattered throughout her room.
Ana Cardenas told Telemundo 48 that she was awoken at about 4 a.m. last Saturday by the sound of something dripping in her bedroom. But when she went went to the window and noticed it wasn't raining, Cardenas turned on the lights discover blood dripping from the ceiling and splattering across the room.
“My apartment [was] covered in blood!" Cardenas said in Spanish. "Because I had the ceiling fan on, the same blood that was dripping from the apartment above fell onto the fan blades and that caused the blood to be all over."
Cardenas said the blood had splattered across the walls and on her bed and body.
Get top local stories in DFW delivered to you every morning. Sign up for NBC DFW's News Headlines newsletter.
"It grossed me out. I was in shock," Cardenas said. "I thought, 'This isn't real. This is a dream. Wake up.' I called maintenance and they said, 'Are you sure?' and I said, 'Blood is falling on me.'"
Cardenas called 911 and when emergency crews responded to the upstairs neighbor’s apartment, they discovered the man had died of natural causes and had been decomposing for five or six days.
"The firefighters knocked down his door and the body was lying exactly where my fan is underneath. He had carpet but the blood seeped through to my ceiling," she said.
Texas News
News from around the state of Texas.
The apartment complex where she lives sent out a cleaning company, but a lot of her belongings were ruined and had to be thrown away, according to Telemundo 48.
Cardenas said she did not have renter’s insurance and is battling the complex's management company to compensate her for the damaged property.
Cardenas told NBC affiliate KTSM she is traumatized and hasn't been able to eat or sleep since the incident. She said she also wants a medical exam to ensure she doesn’t have an infection from being exposed to the blood.
“It was awful, an awful impact,” Cardenas said.
She said she did not renew her lease and continues to search for an apartment within her budget.
