Mail Carrier Claimed Mail Room Had Been Messed Up and Defecated In

The senior housing facility at 1 W. Conway St. - Hanover Square - in Baltimore has a mail room on the first floor, behind a wall of mailboxes for the residents. On one Monday, the regular mail delivery person came in and said he had found a nasty mess in the mail room. He said that the door to the room had been inadvertently left unlocked all weekend, and someone had entered it and pulled mail out from the backs of mailboxes, then had defecated on the floor and then smeared some of their fecal matter on the wall. He later told me personally that it had happened that way. 

Mail was not delivered to residents' mailboxes for the following week-and-a-half, but management did not notify residents of the situation until Friday afternoon. Management finally posted flyers about this on every apartment door the last thing on their Friday at work. It said something about "as you already know," but many residents did not know mail was not being delivered. Most rarely come out of their apartments, and many do not check their mailboxes for days or weeks at a time. 

No police investigation occurred. No flyers were posted asking residents if we know anything, or had we seen anything that could help solve the nasty crime. None of us residents were questioned about it. So we were concerned that the person who committed the crime is a mentally unbalanced, hostile individual who may do something else even worse. 

We residents often have medications come by mail. I had medications come in the mail that week, but they were held at the post office. Some medications are all there is keeping certain residents alive. Also, some men were angry because it was Fathers' Day weekend, and they expected cards and possible gifts by mail from their children for Fathers' Day. Then they expected to talk by phone or Internet and thank their children. 

That flyer on Friday had informed us residents that we had to go to the post office to get our mail, but that is not easy for many of us who are old and have no transportation to the post office. 

Mail delivery was not restored until the following Wednesday, after a bio hazard team came in and cleaned up a meager brown stain from the floor and possibly wall. It only took them a few minutes, but if it had been as the mail carrier said, it would have taken longer than that to be safely cleaned.

Many months later, I learned that it was an alleged hoax by the regular mailman. Allegedly, he had gotten angry when a mail delivery woman working the building on the regular carrier's day off had not done the job correctly. When she had finished her mail duties there on a previous day, she had not repositioned a cardboard box that is set under a mail slot in the door where residents can drop off outgoing mail and that mail was laying on the floor when the regular carrier came in on the following Monday. The brown stain on the floor was most likely from the cardboard box being slid over it every mail day for a long time. What was on the wall was not fecal matter and was a small stain.

At least one resident had to pay a late fee on a bill he had sent a check in on by mailing it through the mail room door slot.

 It was all a 'hissy fit' by the regular mail delivery man.