OKC Apartment Manager Responds To Tenant's Claims

By Steve Shaw, News 9

OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. - Walker's Station Apartments is responding to claims by some of their tenants that maintenance workers are entering apartments without permission. 

Walker's Station manager Colista McCoy says maintenance workers don't enter apartments unless there is an emergency, or if they have a work order to do so. 

On Tuesday News 9 told you about a Walker's Station tenant who admits she pulled a gun on a maintenance worker back in February. She claims that worker opened up her door unannounced. 

4/24/2012 Related Story: Woman Accuses OKC Apartment Complex Of Illegal Activities, Bullying

McCoy says she has a copy of the work order to prove maintenance had a right to be there.

"Nobody working here deserves to have a gun drawn on him when they are just doing their job.  And you say this has happened more than once?  Yes.  She has drawn guns on several of my maintenance workers," McCoy said. 

Walker's Station tried to evict the tenant, but the tenant won her eviction hearing in Oklahoma County Court on Tuesday.

McCoy says the mess up at that hearing was Walker's Station's representative didn't bring a copy of a police report, taken February 10, after the tenant summoned police to her apartment to complain that a maintenance worker showed up unannounced eight days earlier.

"After the police finished interviewing her, the police officer actually came here concerned that someone would get hurt.  They were concerned they weren't dealing with a stable situation," said McCoy.

An Oklahoma Police spokesman Wednesday would not confirm that conversation took place. The tenants contention all along has been that Walker's Station maintenance workers enter people's apartments without permission. McCoy says a work order dated January 31 shows that the tenant knew maintenance were coming to her apartment for a busted screen door.

"When they call in a work order, they're giving us permission to go in their apartment to make those repairs," McCoy said.

McCoy says maintenance sometimes doesn't get to these requests for two or three days.

"Where do you draw the line? If you are considering taking the life of someone? Yeah you just don't do that."

Since our first story aired about this dispute last night, News 9 talked to another tenant at Walker's Station who also says maintenance workers have walked into her apartment several times without work orders.