Wednesday, August 18, 1999
Boy falls through apartment floor
Inspectors condemn building
BY TOM McCANN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Fire captain Bob Pope inspects the hole that 23-month-old Rondell Evans fell through.
(Glenn Hartong photo)
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A 23-month-old boy fell through the bathroom floor of a Fairview apartment Tuesday afternoon, hit his head on a barbell and landed on the basement's concrete floor.
Rondell Evans and his mother, Eugenia Reynolds, 21, who live on the second floor of the building at 2509 W. McMicken Ave., were downstairs in another apartment, visiting Connie Pottinger, when the young boy wandered into her bathroom around 1 p.m. and fell 8 feet into the basement.
He was taken to Children's Hospital Medical Center, where he was treated and released.
Just a flap of plastic tile covered the basketball-sized hole in the bathroom's rotting floorboards. Ms. Pottinger said the floor has been like that since she moved in three months ago. The bathtub is held up by one crumbling wooden beam. She said she had complained four or five times to the landlord, Michael Vonbargen of Lebanon. He never came to fix it, she said.
“My 2-year-old almost fell down that hole twice before I caught her,” Ms. Pottinger said. “I can't sleep at night in case one of my five kids has to go to the bathroom. There are open wires coming out of the wall. We have a rat problem, a cockroach problem. But I have nowhere else to go.”
Ms. Pottinger never called the Cincinnati Department of Buildings and Inspection about her living conditions. If she had, inspectors would have come within 24 hours, Director William Langevin said Tuesday.
“No tenant should have to be exposed to these kinds of hazards, but inspecting each building in the city is a massive, if not impossible, task,” Mr. Langevin said. “Unless tenants complain to us instead of the landlord, we have no way of knowing.”
Building inspectors visited the site after the accident and condemned the property. Ms. Pottinger had to move out of her apartment Tuesday night. Ms. Reynolds and a family on the third floor have three days to find a new place. The American Red Cross will get hotel rooms for the families for a short time until they can find permanent homes.
Cheryl Brock, who lives on the third floor, said she also has com plained to Mr. Vonbargen on matters ranging from sparking electrical outlets to water being turned off for weeks at a time.
“I've had some bad landlords, but I never seen anything like this,” she said.
Mr. Vonbargen could not be reached for comment. He has owned the property since 1986. The building is 70 years old.
Ms. Pottinger said she pays $350 a month for her apartment. Although she could pay the same price for a much nicer apartment, other landlords are not willing to rent to her.
“When you're a single mother on welfare with five kids, this is the best you can do,” she said. “It's not only filthy, it puts our our kids in danger.”
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