photo by: Submitted

The Peppertree Apartment complex in southwest Lawrence, pictured Friday, June 17, 2022.

On June 5, Lawrence resident Jeremy Campeau suffered a trauma that he will deal with for the rest of his life. His roommate, a 22-year-old friend, shot himself in the head, and Campeau, 26, found the body in their shared apartment.

“There was blood everywhere,” he says. It was horrifying “in every way.” But he did his best to do what needed to be done. He called the police. He underwent an interrogation. He tried not to fall apart. He made plans to attend the memorial service in another state and to meet his friend’s grieving family.

After that, he says, he needed some distance to grieve and heal. He needed to get out of that apartment. But that, he discovered, would come with a significant cost.

On June 9, four days after the death, the property manager of his apartment complex, Peppertree Apartments at 3100 W. 22nd St., informed Campeau that, trauma or no, he could not just move out of the apartment. He would have to pay an early-termination fee “equal to 2 times your monthly base rent of $875 which totals $1750.”

The manager said because the deceased friend was residing in the apartment without being on the lease that Campeau was “in direct violation” of the lease agreement and that “any costs incurred due to this incident are the responsibility of the leaseholders.”

Campeau, who had been sharing the apartment with another roommate who had left for the summer, was stunned. He had been letting his friend stay in the three-bedroom apartment while the friend looked for another place, and while he did not dispute the fine print in the lease, he expected there to be — morally, if not legally — some kind of compassionate exception.

“I was baffled that there were no extreme circumstances situation,” he told the Journal-World Friday. “I shook someone’s ice cold dead body and had to call the police, but they just care about their money.”

The Journal-World reached out to Peppertree and to Maxus Properties LLC for comment, but multiple calls were not returned.

The manager’s letter, which began by expressing condolences to Campeau, nevertheless went on to state that Campeau would also be invoiced for “the full biohazard cleanup” necessitated by the gun death.

“They are also trying to charge me for the cleaning fees,” he said. “I’m a broke college student … so it’s quite difficult.”

The manager also indicated that Campeau could transfer to another apartment in the complex but that he would have to “requalify, pay all fees related to the transfer and pay the invoice for cleanup prior to transfer.”

Campeau, originally from Washington state, attends Ottawa University, where his friend also planned to go. He says he’s a psychology major and has received some counseling by speaking with a professor in his master’s program about the trauma he has experienced.

“It’s the hardest thing I’ve done,” he says. And the difficulty is compounded every day by having to see the door to the room where the death occurred, he says. It’s still taped shut with a piece of red tape that says “EVIDENCE.”

“Every time I walk by that I get depressed,” he says, and he wishes he could afford to be anywhere else.

The property manager’s letter goes on to tell Campeau to “contact the community manager to let her know which option you would prefer,” all of which involve financial costs, and concludes with “We truly are sorry for your loss.”

Editor’s note: After this story was published, a GoFundMe account was established to assist Jeremy Campeau. That account can be found here.