JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 A Jacksonville toddler was left recovering in the hospital after his mom told Action News Jax he was bitten by a rat in their HUD housing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe infection could have went in his bloodstream. He was at risk of turning sepsis, so that could have killed my child,\u201d Teliah Broughton told Action News Jax.<\/p>\n
According to doctors at Wolfson Children\u2019s Hospital, one-year-old messiah smith experienced a bacterial skin infection.<\/p>\n
In a letter written to the property managers, doctors said in part:<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is reason to believe that unsanitary housing conditions, including the presence of rodents, may have contributed to development or the exacerbation of [Messiah\u2019s] infection.\u201d<\/p>\n
Teliah said she first pointed out concerns about rats in their home to the property managers back in August.<\/p>\n
Although an email chain provided to Action News Jax shows property managers did offer the option of Teliah terminating her lease early without any fees, Teliah said they did not respond to her request to be placed in a new, safer home.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey should have done more, like I told them from the jump. This is very dangerous when it comes to small children and rats,\u201d Teliah explained. \u201cThey should\u2019ve put me out of this house and put me somewhere that was rodent-free. And they just, they failed to do that. So they\u2019re still failing to put me somewhere that\u2019s rodent-free, so I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n
Action News Jax reached out to the property manager after hours Monday night, but have not heard back.<\/p>\n
We also reached out to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, but only got a message about the government shutdown. <\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <\/b><\/a><\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: <\/b>Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/b><\/a>]<\/b><\/p>\n [SIGN UP: <\/b>Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/b><\/a>] <\/b><\/p>\n Click here<\/b><\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, <\/b>click here<\/b><\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and <\/b>click here<\/b><\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/b><\/p>\n Action News Jax Top Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 A Jacksonville toddler was left recovering in the hospital after his mom told Action News…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":370817,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5136],"tags":[12189,15619,13030,5229,3188,723,69424,11561,7310,425,12175,12188,145934,178737,178738,33773,178743,178739,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,178740,178742,178741],"class_list":{"0":"post-370816","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-action_news","9":"tag-action_news_jack","10":"tag-action_news_jacks","11":"tag-america","12":"tag-fl","13":"tag-florida","14":"tag-hud","15":"tag-jack","16":"tag-jacksonville","17":"tag-local","18":"tag-logan","19":"tag-logan_mcdonald","20":"tag-messiah","21":"tag-morgan_mcdonalds","22":"tag-northwest_jackson","23":"tag-northwest_jacksonville","24":"tag-talia","25":"tag-talia_bratton","26":"tag-united-states","27":"tag-united-states-of-america","28":"tag-unitedstates","29":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","30":"tag-us","31":"tag-usa","32":"tag-wilsons_childrens_hospital","33":"tag-wolfson","34":"tag-wolfsons_childrens_hospital"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}