Cockroaches overrun home

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (WTHI) - Imagine coming home to a group of unwanted visitors in the form of cockroaches. Now, what if no matter what you did to exterminate them, they just kept coming. Folks in one neighborhood said that's a reality they live with everyday.

They spend the night creeping, crawling, and conquering every inch of one home off Beech Street in Terre Haute. At first, it was problem that was isolated within the house’s walls.

"I was knocking on the door. I noticed, I said 'oh my god', and I stepped back and it was the whole door. Right beside the door was nothing but cockroaches,” Ron Prouse, a neighbor said.

Prouse lives across the street, but he also owns the home right next door. He said that after a few weeks, the bugs began moving to new territory.

His tenants soon began to notice the cockroaches making their way into their home and so did many of the neighbors we talked to Thursday afternoon.

We went to the home earlier this week and found several folks spending the evening trying to stem the advancing roach tide. But even that has become expensive.

"I done put out one $125 in the last few weeks. You (know for) more spray and chemicals,” Prouse said.

But the home owners say they weren’t aware of the problem until their previous tenants left. They said the renters left the Beech Street home in deplorable conditions.

Now, it's taken them weeks and hundreds of dollars to clean up the mess; in addition to having exterminators come to the home several times.

They added that they hope the problem will be solved within this week; because they say their bug problem is one gift they don't want to give their neighbors or future tenants.

The homeowners said this is the first time they've had a bug problem in all their years of renting the property.