By John Howell Sr.

Happy Days Motel owner Mike Fudge said that a couple who claimed to have found a bedbug infestation in their rented motel room had not been occupants of the motel.

Fudge, owner of properties in Batesville and Sardis, including the Sardis motel, said that Thomas Anthony and his girlfriend, Chastity Collumns, had lived in an apartment in a separate building on the same lot as the motel for about three months. Fudge also questioned the sequence of events in a story published Tuesday, “Bedbugs lived through ‘bomb’ in motel room.”

The motel and apartment owner said that the couple’s first complaint came after they had been warned about the apartment’s dirty interior.

“They had so much stuff in the room; the room was beyond filthy,” building owner said. Fudge said after the couple was warned, “The next day they (claimed that they) had fleas.”

“It’s not like we weren’t doing anything,” Fudge said. The couple was temporarily relocated while Fudge’s employees released the aerosol in their room, a common treatment for flea infestation.

The property owner said that he gave the couple the warning about the condition of the apartment on June 1, telling them to vacate the premises in a week. He said that the first time they mentioned suspicions of bedbugs to him was at least a week later, as they were leaving.

Fudge said that he suspected that the allegations about the bedbugs were in retaliation for having been told to vacate the premises. The motel owner also said that he was familiar with steps needed to eradicate bedbugs.

April Lott, Anthony’s mother, said that she had collected samples of the insects she suspected to be bedbugs to send to the Mississippi State Department of Health.

On Thursday, Mississippi State Department of Health Entomologist Dr. Jeffrey Brown said that he had received no samples.