Things That Don’t Mix

Over the years as a crime-scene cleaner, I’ve made mental notes about things that just don’t mix well with alcohol. I thought I’d seen it all, but after working this violent accidental cleanup, I had a brand-new note to add to my mental list of things to avoid when alcohol is flowing: sliding glass doors.

It was a humid, overcast July Saturday morning, not yet light out, when the call came in from our call center. There was a nasty, bloody mess at a home in an upper middle-class suburb of the lovely Asheville, North Carolina. After the dispatcher gave me the details, which suggested a clear biohazard risk, I put together a team of three, and we suited up and hit the road.

Picturesque Scene Shattered

Around lunchtime, we pulled into the long, winding driveway of a large, two-story brick home. Several young men, who were on the front lawn smoking and talking, looked in our direction and pointed to the front door, where a woman in a business suit was motioning for us to come inside. She silently led us through a large, beautifully decorated, very tidy formal living room with a winding staircase to the left and a large entrance into an equally tidy dining room on the right. She led us past the dining room and into a spacious family room, which was a shambles – a stark contrast to the rest of the house.

Shattered and broken glass covered the floors and furniture.

The wood floors were also smeared with dried blood that people had tracked onto the area rug, and the wood floor boards were gouged and scratched in several places. Two small bloodstained upholstered chairs lay on their sides, and on the couch a bloody sheet and several bloody towels were haphazardly tossed. The woman pointed to a gaping opening on the far wall, beyond which was a beautifully landscaped swimming pool, hot tub, and pool house.

“That’s where the sliding glass door was,” she said.

Through the immense hole where a patio door should have been, we could see more shattered glass, copious amounts of blood, and dozens of beer cans, dirty drink glasses, crumpled towels, and overflowing ashtrays all over the cement pool deck and furniture. Blood had run from the cement deck into the pool, which now had a red tinge to it.

“My son had a party while we were out of town, and one of his friends slipped and fell through the glass doors,” she said.

One glance at the demolished patio-door screen, which lay ripped and mangled on the pool deck, and at the door frame, which was partially ripped out of the wall and was severely bent, told us that’s not exactly what happened, but we didn’t push it. We were there to clean and sanitize.

Getting to Work

Turns out this party happened a little more than two days before we were called, so the blood on the floors and pool deck was completely dried and first had to be liquefied with an enzyme solvent before it could be cleaned.  Because blood always poses a biohazard risk, Advanced Bio Treatment follows OSHA blood-borne pathogens standards by using special hospital-grade sterilizers and cleaning agents to decontaminate and thoroughly clean any area where blood is present. We were able to remove all traces of the dried blood from the concrete, from the expensive area rug in the family room, and from the upholstered furniture. Nothing had to be discarded or replaced. Most important, we removed any blood-borne pathogens that might have been present and might have spread bacteria throughout this home. Because this was a chemical-free pool, we drained and decontaminated it to make sure all biohazards were removed.

We now know that the friend who fell through the glass doors was actually a 15-year-old minor who didn’t exactly slip and fall.

There had been underage alcohol consumption; he was intoxicated and, from the entrance to the family room about 15 feet away, he decided to entertain his equally intoxicated buddies by getting an impressive running start to a world-class cannonball dive into the pool, but someone had closed the sliding glass doors and he burst right through them and ended up in the intensive care unit. The son who threw the party was passed out on a deck lounge until late the next afternoon, when he decided he’d better call his folks, who were already on a flight back to Asheville because the injured minor’s parents had already called them.

The family was very grateful that Advanced Bio Treatment responded quickly, within six hours of the initial call, was able to clean and decontaminate their home, and was able to remove all biohazards.

Advanced Bio Treatment professionals also worked with them financially and assisted them in filing a claim with their homeowner insurance company, which paid for part of the clean-up and repairs and most of the liability costs, which the insurance company eventually negotiated out of court with the minor’s parents, associated with an injury on their property.