Torment of bedbugs drove woman to set apartment fire

Sherry Young says she spent close to a year living in fear of bedbugs.

So on Monday, sleep deprived and desperate, she turned on her apartment's stove and oven. She left for a day.

Then she returned, sprayed herself with rubbing alcohol and started pouring alcohol across the floor.

Flames tore through the 48-unit apartment complex, growing so powerful that the building’s roof caved in. Nine fire engines and about 60 personnel fought the blaze.

By the time it was over late Tuesday afternoon, the building was considered a total loss. Five people, including Young, were taken to the hospital, in what the Detroit Fire Department is calling an accidental fire. Three of the injured were firefighters. One received neck burns from a collapsing piece of the ceiling, and two others were treated for possible smoke inhalation.

Young, interviewed by phone from the hospital, said she was overcome with regret.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, struggling to speak as she began sobbing. “I didn’t mean it. My neighbors ... everybody’s displaced because of me.”

Young moved into a unit at the Grayton Park Apartments, near the Rouge Park Golf Course on Detroit’s west side, more than two years ago. She had been homeless and placed in the unit by Travelers Aid, which could not be reached for comment.

Sometime around January, she began to notice markings on her body. She thought she was breaking out — but then the marks multiplied, and she noticed what looked like bedbugs.

She wasn’t sure they were bedbugs, but a neighbor had seen bedbugs recently and thought they had spread to Young’s apartment.

Young called Travelers Aid. They sent an exterminator whose treatment of the apartment was supposed to last six months. But Young was getting bites again within a couple of weeks.

Someone who worked with Grayton Park Apartments tried to exterminate, as well. That didn’t seem to work, either.

The bedbugs would disappear then reappear. Young became more desperate. She said she asked management to be moved to another unit but was told one wasn’t available. She ran a steam machine all over the sheets, but the insects would crawl onto the ceiling and then drop down on her.

“I feel like I’m in some kind of horror movie, with this thing laying eggs around my bed,” she said.

And the bedbugs wouldn’t seem to leave her body, either, even though she was taking twice-daily baths.

“I was in a state of torment,” she said.

Young was close to a breaking point. A day or so before Tuesday’s fire, on advice from a neighbor, she decided to try to heat the bugs out. She also decided that alcohol might work, too. She bought 20 bottles from a Walmart in Dearborn.

She then turned on her stove and oven. She spent Monday night sleeping in her car, as the apartment heated up.

Theodore Reynolds, who lives nearby and used to live at Grayton Park Apartments, remembers running into her and noticing how sleep deprived and distraught she was. He could see markings from her neck up.

“She really believed that she was under attack,” Reynolds said.

Then the next day, on Tuesday, shortly before going back inside the apartment at 2 p.m., Young doused herself with rubbing alcohol.

“I didn’t know that the fumes were so ignitable,” she said. “Had I known that, I would not have doused myself before going into the apartment.”

Before going inside, she prayed and hoped this attempt would work once and for all.

Then she opened the door.

The room was like a sauna. The walls were hot to the touch. Young began pouring alcohol on the floor, one section at a time.

She turned to get another bottle and was pouring close to the oven, when she turned around and saw the floor was on fire. It was the section where she was standing. Her boots were on fire, and so was she.

Young ran out of the apartment as fast as she could, screaming for the fire department. But then, she said, she feared for her neighbors. So she turned around and ran back inside, running through thick smoke that was down to her waist and banging on doors, trying to get neighbors out.

She kept banging until she fell to the ground. On the floor, the air was much clearer. At some point, a neighbor and at least one other person pulled her away.

She was taken to the hospital for burns a short while later.

“I feel so bad about everything, and my neighbors mostly,” she said. “They didn’t deserve that.”

In the aftermath of the fire, Grayton Park's management moved some of the residents into other units owned by the company, said Amelia Hoover, a disaster program specialist with the Red Cross. Many were given Red Cross vouchers for $125.

But some had no place to go. Corace Harleque, 59, who is handicapped, said he can’t stay at any of the other units because they don’t have wheelchair access. He said he had no idea where he was going to sleep Thursday night.

He said he hoped to find a way back inside the complex.

“I’m ... out of luck,” Harleque said. “It’s not right.”

Young is still in the hospital. As an artist and writer who posts samples of her work on her website, she said she lost much of what she owned and worked on in the fire.

“She’s a great booster for Detroit and for Detroit artists,” said Jef Bourgeau, the director of the Museum of New Art in Detroit. “It’s an unfortunate accident.”

Young also said the hospital staff is concerned she may try to take her own life, and that someone is stationed near her bed 24 hours a day.

When she gets out, she doesn’t know where she’ll be staying.

“I’m trying to get back to my life, and now these ... bugs have taken all of my hopes and dreams and aspirations away,” she said between sobs. “I’m feeling desperate. I’m being tormented. I’m living in a nightmare.”

Editor's Note: An earlier version of this article misstated the name of the apartment complex where the fire took place.

Contact Daniel Bethencourt: dbethencourt@freepress.com, 313-223-4531 or on Twitter @_dbethencourt