There's a whole lot of fail to go around in two ghastly incidents of carbon monoxide poisoning that took place last spring at a Best Western in Boone, North Carolina. From the workers who illegally and improperly installed a pool heater to a medical examiner who failed to expedite tests on the two earlier deaths, an awful lot of people have some explaining to do. As a result of those failures, Daryl and Shirley Jenkins ingested lethal doses of carbon monoxide in April. Two months later, 12-year-old Jeffrey Williams was killed by CO while staying in the same room, while his mother Jeannie suffered permanent heart and brain damage.
On Wednesday, the former owner of that hotel was indicted on four felony counts related to this tragedy. Late yesterday, the prosecutor who brought the charges says she's taking a good hard look at whether anyone else's nonfeasance adds up to criminal misbehavior.
“There were so many people, so many wrongs done in this case it’s almost unfathomable to see this kind of negligence,” said Britt Springer, assistant district attorney for Watauga County. “Are others at fault? Absolutely.”
Springer declined to name others at fault. She described the four-count indictment against Damon Mallatere, who managed the hotel, as the strongest criminal case. She said she must weigh whether to seek indictments against others who cooperated in the investigation or instead call them as witnesses against Mallatere.
Another issue, she said, is whether they are criminally liable or simply failed to do their job.
“We have huge amounts of players that acted in a careless and reckless manner, but it doesn’t go to the extent that they should have reasonably known that this would have killed somebody,” Springer said.
Prosecutors are basing their case against Mallatere on two points. They argue that he was ultimately responsible for not getting a permit to move the heater from another hotel he owned at the time (he sold all four of his hotels late last year), and also failed to make sure the heater was properly maintained. Inspectors found that the heater's exhaust pipe was badly corroded, causing lethal amounts of CO to leak into the room where the deaths took place.
After reading this, there are an awful lot of people who need to have lawyers on speed dial. The workers who moved the heater not only did so without a permit, but didn't have the proper licenses to install the heater. The fire department didn't test for CO after the Jenkinses died. The medical examiner, Brent Hall, didn't expedite tests on the Jenkinses for CO poisoning, and also failed to notify local authorities when the results came in. As a result, no one knew that the Jenkinses had also died of CO poisoning until a week after Jeffrey's death. Town inspectors who reviewed the conversion of the heater from propane to natural gas apparently missed that the heater had been installed without a permit. Mallatere's lawyer suggested that prosecutors ought to take a long, hard look at the company that converted the heater did a slipshod job.
At this point, any civil suits would pretty much be a slam dunk--given the colossal negligence displayed by everyone involved, the only question is how many zeroes will be in the awards to the Jenkinses and Williamses. But Springer deserves kudos for probing into whether there's also criminal liability here. And she'll have plenty of time to do it--there are no homicides on the docket, so she intends to bring this case to trial sometime this year.