NOTE: This story contains disturbing photos. Please read at your own discretion.
An Iowa family found a horrifying sight in their home weeks before Halloween after a neighbouring meat locker leaked blood, fat and animal tissue into their basement.
Nick Lestina and his family of seven, according to USA Today, have lived next door to Dahl’s Custom Meat Locker in Bagley for a decade. He never thought something like this — the stuff of nightmares — would happen.
On Oct. 3, Nick Lestina returned home to pick up something he forgot and noticed a red liquid leaking from his sump pump.
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He discovered five inches of animal blood, tissue and fat had leaked into his basement through the drain, covering the entire floor.
“Some things you just think you’ll never see,” he told the publication.
NBC News reports that Dahl’s had dumped the material down a drain that was connected to the home’s pipes.
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“Nobody wants to see that, smell that,” Lestina told local broadcast station WHO-TV. “I wouldn’t want that for anybody, to have that in their house.”
Lestina told the station that Dahl’s hadn’t been co-operative in helping his family clean up the mess, saying “they haven’t reached out at all.”
“In fact, they haven’t taken any accountability for it,” he explained. “They say it’s not their fault and told me ‘good luck.’ If I want to do anything about it, it’s on my dime and my schedule.”
He added that the sanitizing alone is expected to cost over US$2,000.
“I don’t have thousands of dollars to throw away at this,” he said.
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Lestina reached out to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR). The organization has been investigating the situation, WHO-TV reports.
According to the Des Moines Register, the meat locker has offered to help.
“We don’t want to harm anybody. We’re not bad people. We’re trying to make a living, not enemies,” Kaitlin Dahl told the newspaper.
Kevin Wilken, an environment specialist with the Iowa DNR, also said that Dahl’s has been co-operating with the investigation.
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