A Chicago renter says he woke in the middle of the night to rats biting his face after spending months trying to get a severe infestation addressed.
Heriverto Hernandez told Fox32 that the rodents attacked him while he was asleep in his garden-level apartment at a Rogers Park complex about three weeks ago.
Hernandez said he had fallen asleep after a long day at work when, around 3 a.m., he felt something moving across his face.
“I was sleeping at night. I work in the city, and I was really tired. I went to sleep, and [the rats] attacked me around 3 a.m. I felt them on my face and threw them off of my face,” Hernandez told the station in a translated interview.
Images showed swelling around his eye and face, along with red cuts across his forehead.
After the incident, Hernandez sought medical treatment and received a rabies shot and antibiotics. His eye remains irritated from the attack, according to the report.
Hernandez is among dozens of residents involved with Fuerzas Activas de la Damen, a tenant union affiliated with the All-Chicago Tenant Alliance. He said he has been raising concerns for months about the rodent problem inside his apartment.
The tenant union alleges that rats and cockroaches have affected multiple units and that building management has failed to resolve ongoing maintenance complaints.
The management company for Rogers Park Apartments told the outlet that it has invested over $1.5 million into improving the apartment complex since March 2025 and has rehabilitated more than 20 units.
ALSO READ: What Happened To Alice Cottonsox: Is She Alive Or Dead? Wikipedia Bio Explored
The company also claimed that Hernandez is involved in ongoing eviction proceedings for failing to pay his rent for eight months, and that they have made multiple offers to relocate him to a newly renovated apartment, to no avail.
“Our objective has been to improve the building, address longstanding issues, and provide safe, quality housing for our residents,” ARK Management said in a statement obtained by the outlet.
“The greatest challenge we have faced in accomplishing that goal has been our inability to communicate and work directly with certain tenants,” the company said in a statement.
“We believe this has created unnecessary delays, misunderstandings, and obstacles to resolving maintenance issues promptly.”
The management also said they take any “allegation regarding tenant health and safety extremely seriously.”
Jake Marshall-Braun, an attorney who represents tenants in ongoing litigation, told the outlet that the landlord is responsible for maintaining safe living conditions regardless of legal proceedings.
“A landlord’s responsibility to maintain their building does not end when a tenant is behind on rent or is in eviction proceedings,” Marshall-Braun told the outlet in a statement.
The terrifying incident comes as a study published this month found that house mice are genetically evolving to build immunity to household pesticides, while rats are simply figuring out how to escape deadly traps.
The findings indicate that mice and rats are adapting to the decades-long war with humans, and that big cities may need to reconsider methods for keeping the disease-carrying critters at bay.
Continuing use of rodenticide could, in the long run, be more harmful to other city wildlife that are not being targeted by the poison, scientists warned.
An attorney representing the apartment complex’s landlords did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
