Jasmine Merrill walked into her one-bedroom unit at Eagle Trace Apartments on Monday night, flipped on the living room light, and found the ceiling had caved in completely, burying her bed and two nightstands under insulation, dust and wood chips. She and her 5-year-old daughter, Aaliyah, had not been home when it happened, and Merrill says that timing may have saved their lives.
Merrill had planned to stay home Monday because Aaliyah wasn't feeling well, but she sent her daughter to an aunt's house and went to work instead, according to WYFF News 4. “I turned the light on and it was fallen in,” Merrill told the station, describing the moment she discovered the wreckage of her living room. She said the collapse knocked out the apartment's air conditioning, and Aaliyah later told her the unit was too hot and too clogged with insulation to stay inside for more than a few minutes.
Merrill said no one was hurt in this collapse, but she doesn't believe it was ordinary wear and tear, and she said the ceiling would have fallen directly on top of them had they been home. “I don't feel safe in my home,” she told the outlet. She has since requested an inspection from Greenville County Codes Enforcement.
A Complex With a Documented History of Failures
This is not the first time a ceiling has given way at Eagle Trace. The 309-unit complex at 1 Lakeside Road, built in 1973 and managed by Rushmore Management LLC, saw a similar living room ceiling collapse three years earlier, in August 2023, per the same WYFF account. That earlier incident displaced then-tenant Teral Smith and his 10-year-old daughter, who WYFF first met at the time.
Two days after that 2023 collapse, management gave Smith a notice declaring his unit uninhabitable and just three days to move out, without offering temporary housing, according to a Facebook video documenting his case. Smith retained the Dunaway Law Firm and threatened to sue under South Carolina's Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, and the station says it is still working to learn how that case was resolved.
Eagle Trace has also weathered a more recent disaster. A fire tore through another building at the complex in July 2026, injuring seven people and exposing both structural and burn damage, the station reports. The Greenville County Sheriff's Office labeled the fire's cause accidental, reporting it most likely resulted from fireworks. That fire building still sits under a blue tarp, per WYFF's reporting.
What South Carolina Law Requires of Landlords
State law places clear obligations on property managers in situations like these. Under Section 27-40-440 of the South Carolina Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, landlords must keep rental units in a fit and habitable condition, including maintaining structural elements in safe working order, according to the South Carolina Legislature. The supplied provision addresses those obligations but does not establish whether lease language can alter them. According to Greenville County Building Safety and Code Enforcement, all residential rental properties require work to be completed by a South Carolina licensed contractor.
South Carolina Legal Services discusses a 14-day rule for heat and hot-water problems, as outlined by South Carolina Legal Services. But when fire or casualty damage substantially impairs a unit's normal occupancy, a separate statute, S.C. Code § 27-40-650, allows a tenant to vacate immediately and end the lease by notifying the landlord in writing within seven days. The article does not establish what damages tenants who remain in a defective unit may recover.
WYFF News 4 says it reached out to Eagle Trace management about the ceiling collapse, the July fire and the 2023 case, but management did not respond to the station's questions. The leasing office did offer Merrill and her daughter another apartment, along with repairs and a full investigation, the station reports.
An Aging Complex in a Tight Rental Market
Eagle Trace appears in listing data from Apartment Finder, but the supplied listing material does not provide pricing, bedroom-range, total-cost or comparative-affordability information.
Rushmore Management LLC, which operates the property, is licensed by the South Carolina Real Estate Commission but is not accredited by the Better Business Bureau of Upstate South Carolina, per the Better Business Bureau. The firm's operating history in South Carolina is not established by the supplied sources. Whether the recurring structural failures at the 53-year-old complex point to a broader maintenance problem is now a question for Greenville County Codes Enforcement.
