Last spring, Jeannie Williams and her son, Jeffrey, checked into a Best Western in Boone, North Carolina--only to be overcome by carbon monoxide that killed Jeffrey and nearly killed Jeannie. Now Jeannie is starting a push to prevent this from ever happening again. She wants all hotels across the country to install CO detectors.
More than eight months after Jeffrey died of carbon monoxide poisoning in a Boone hotel room, Jeannie Williams is rebuilding her life. She has a new purpose.
“JeffreysList,” she calls it.
It will be a database of hotels in the Carolinas, and eventually other states, that have carbon monoxide detectors in their guest rooms, part of a larger Jeffrey Lee Williams Foundation designed to educate people about the dangers of the deadly gas.
Watch a video of the interview
here.
For those who don't know, Daryl and Shirley Jenkins had died of CO poisoning while staying in the same room on a visit from Washington state two months earlier. However, the area medical examiner failed to expedite tests on the Jenkinses, and when he got those results, he didn't alert anyone about it. As a result, local authorities didn't know the Jenkinses had died of carbon monoxide poisoning until a week after Jeffrey died. It was only after Jeffrey's death that it was discovered that he and the Jenkinses had been killed by CO from the hotel's indoor pool heater. That heater had not only been illegally and improperly installed, but was severely out of maintenance. The hotel's former owner, Damon Mallatere, is facing charges of manslaughter for the deaths of the Jenkinses and Jeffrey and assault causing serious bodily injury for what happened to Jeannie.
Jeannie is already showing the effects of permanent brain damage she suffered after being overwhelmed by the gas only half an hour after she arrived in the room. She has a noticeable limp, and has muscle weakness in her arms and legs. She also has a hard time remembering things. Yet, she still wants to educate herself about the effects of carbon monoxide--specifically, the inner workings of indoor pool heaters like the one that spewed carbon monoxide into their room. She and her family have every intention of filing wrongful death suits as well.
The Jeffrey Lee Williams Foundation is still in the planning stages, but will be launched sometime this year.