The Charlotte Observer recently got its hands on a raft of emails related to the deaths of an elderly couple from Washington state in a Boone, North Carolina hotel room back in April. We now know that they died from carbon monoxide poisoning. However, due to a number of missteps, it took two months before we learned that was indeed the cause of their deaths. By that time, seven-year-old Jeffrey Williams had been found dead in the same hotel room, also from a lethal dose of CO. For more details on this, check out my previous diaries on this story here and here.
This story, like every other story the Observer has done on this, sent a chill down my spine. Despite dozens of red flags, it doesn't look like there was any information exchanged between the various emergency responders who handled this case.
For instance, health inspector Lori Durham, who happened to be at the hotel for a routine inspection and tried unsuccessfully to revive Darryl Jenkins, asked if the fireplace gas had been turned off. It wasn't, so she turned it off at the request of police. However, the health department didn't share this story with other agencies, and no one from the police department ever talked to Durham. This is critical, because it later emerged that a malfunctioning indoor pool heater leaked the gas that killed the Jenkinses and Jeffrey--a heater that, as it turns out, was installed without a permit. The gas may have leaked in via the opening for the fireplace. But we still don't know yet because nobody talked to Durham.
The Boone Fire Department did a spot-check for any potential hazards, and didn't find any. However, it had only one truck equipped with a four-gas monitor--and that truck wasn't sent out to the hotel. As several people have said in my previous posts, two people in the same room don't just die in their sleep. The Observer interviewed Patsye Watt, the Jenkinses' sister-in-law, who had come to Boone with her husband (Shirley's brother) and the Jenkinses. She said bluntly that the Jenkinses were the picture of health, and there had to have been something wrong with the room. Ten to one she probably said the same thing to the emergency personnel on scene--and in somewhat less pleasant terms. Fire chief Jimmy Isaacs admits that he never even considered the possibility that the Jenkinses were killed by poisonous gas. To his credit, he has since ordered gas monitors put on all four of the department's engines.
The bulk of the blame for this tragedy rests with the medical examiner who handled this case, Brent Hall. He failed to notify the state about the urgency of the matter, and failed to get the toxicology tests on the Jenkinses expedited. But had people at the local level connected the dots, little Jeffrey might still be alive.