Cindy Helm, a resident of Cedarwood Apartments, talks Friday about the precautions she takes entering and leaving her building at the apartment complex near Cedarwood Avenue and 24th Street. Many residents have expressed their concerns with the safety of the complex in light of the recent homicides and also their opinions that management has not responded to requests for what they believe are simple measures to make the area more secure. Nick Krug/Journal-World Photo

Meridee Helm-Summerville, a resident of the Cedarwood Apartments, looks down the block Friday as she lets her dogs out between two buildings where Lawrence police suspect two homicides have occurred within the last six months at the apartment complex near Cedarwood Avenue and 24th Street. Helm-Summerville, like many residents, has expressed concerns with the safety of the complex in light of the recent homicides. Nick Krug/Journal-World Photo

Cindy Helm is terrified to leave her apartment.

With two possible homicides about 100 feet from each other in her apartment complex over a six-month period, Helm doesn’t go outside alone.

“We stick together,” Helm said. “We have to follow our own safety precautions.”

She doesn’t open the door to strangers. Her deadbolt is always locked. And her brother-in-law is the only one to take her dogs, Kujo and Chevy, out for walks in the dark.

Helm lives in the Cedarwood Apartments building at 1727 W. 24th St., where police suspect foul play was involved in the death of woman whose body was found Sunday.

Just behind Helm’s building to the east is a Cedarwood Apartments duplex where resident Patrick Roberts was shot and killed during an alleged aggravated robbery in March.

Helm said she was not told about the March homicide before she moved in Sept. 11, but since learning of it and the most-recent possible homicide, she and her family have been on high alert.

“It’s breathtaking — not just one, but two in the same apartments?” Helm said. “You don’t hardly hear of anything in Lawrence.”

Robert Collins, who lives directly below the apartment where the woman’s body was found, said he has his own measures for staying safe in his apartment.

“I don’t come out at night and I always look through the peephole before answering the door,” Collins said. “I’m on oxygen, so I can’t run.”

To help residents feel safe, Lawrence Police Department spokesman Sgt. Trent McKinley said officers have contacted individuals in the area to say that police are there to protect them.

“We have communicated that we are patrolling the area, are accessible to them and we have encouraged them to call should they see any suspicious behavior,” McKinley said.

Additionally, officers have been increasingly more visible in the neighborhoods around Cedarwood Apartments “for quite some time,” McKinley said.

“Using crime data, among other things, we have increased our presence in that area and other areas of town,” McKinley said.

While residents like Helm have said that “cops are always around,” many wish management would do more to protect them.

“I think Cedarwood has to take safety precautions for its residents,” Helm said. “Other buildings have codes to get into the buildings. Here, anyone can get in.”

When Helm asked the apartment’s manager to install locks or security measures to the building entrances, Helm said she was told that could not happen due to “budget cuts.”

Currently, there are no safety lights to illuminate the exterior of the apartment building. It appears that there are fixtures for a light to be placed, but the bulbs are either burned out or the fixtures are defective, resident and former Cedarwood maintenance worker Meridee Helm-Summerville said.

“It’s pitch-black at night. There isn’t even a streetlight close by,” Helm-Summerville said. “I want locks for the building entrance and exterior lights.”

Alexus Sanders, who lives down the hall from the apartment where the woman’s body was found, said she works from 4 p.m. to midnight at her job. When she returns to her apartment after finishing a work shift, she’s afraid to be outside in the dark.

“I don’t even want to get out of my car alone when I come home,” Sanders said. “We don’t want to stay here, but we’re locked into a lease.”

But the problems with security began before the latest possible homicide. Helm said that when she moved in to her first-floor apartment, there were no locks on her windows.

After asking management “several times” for window locks, her brother-in-law took the initiative to install locks himself.

Last month, an intruder kicked in Sanders’s front door. When she called management to ask for a new one, she was told it “wasn’t the landlord’s responsibility.”

After a confrontation, Sanders said she convinced her landlord to address the issue, which resulted in the installation of a bedroom door without peepholes or a chain lock as her front door.

“I now have to pay $270 for a paper-thin door without a peephole for a door I didn’t even kick in,” Sanders said. “This door isn’t even worth $270.”

Helm said that though she has a door designed to be a front door, it isn’t enough to make her feel safe.

“The doors aren’t sturdy,” Helm said. “You could kick them in.”

Treni Westcott, field supervisor of code enforcement for the city, said any Lawrence tenant can contact the city’s development services at 785-832-7700 to speak with the code enforcement division and complain about safety hazards that may be against city code. Tenants are encouraged to speak with their landlords first, however.

“Property maintenance codes call for lockable doors and lockable windows when they’re on the ground floor,” Wescott said. “A tenant could report that and if code violations are found, management could be issued a notice.”

Cedarwood Apartments manager Margarita Yoder refused to speak with the Journal-World when asked for a response.