Rooms at the city’s Tamarac hotel shelter have been “unbearably” hot, with temperatures hitting 85 degrees inside at night. Hoping for a reprieve, some families opened sliding glass doors — but there were no railings outside the door, leading to an 11-year-old girl falling from the seventh floor earlier this month.
That’s according to a police investigation into the incident, which the girl survived with a broken femur and other injuries.
The extensive report found that multiple families and their small children had been suffering for weeks with broken air conditioning, pest infestations and worries about the dangerous doors.
“What happened to this family is a heartbreaking tragedy, and our deepest sympathies are with them. The city has already taken steps to ensure something like this never happens again,” read a statement from Derek Woodbury, a spokesman with Denver’s Department of Housing Stability.
The girl and her family, who have not been identified, arrived in the United States last year and moved into the shelter in East Denver last year, the report states. The family also has a two-month-old baby. The report does not name anyone in the family.
On July 6, the night before the fall, the family had opened the sliding door for air. They felt “unbearable heat” and had trouble breathing. In earlier years, the sliding door would have opened onto a small balcony, but the previous owner of the hotel removed the railings before selling it to the city.
As a result, the doors open onto small, unprotected platforms. City workers had secured the doors with epoxy and simple screws, but those defenses were defeated by residents seeking relief from the heat. A police officer later found the bolt on the door in the family’s room could be opened with a broom handle.
That night, someone apparently left the door open but closed the curtain. The next day, the girl was playing with her parents, none of them realizing the danger, according to the police report.
The girl “ran towards the window, not realizing it was open, and fell through the window,” according to a detective’s report.
The girl fell almost five floors, landing on a lower roof. Her mother raced from the room to help her, while her father initially stayed behind with the family’s baby.
Shelter staff then moved the girl to the front entrance of the building to await paramedics. A city spokesman couldn’t say whether staff had proper medical training to move someone with a potential spinal injury.
The girl suffered “obvious fractures on both legs,” and wounds to her face and head, according to a report from Denver Police Detective Lucia Jaramillo. The girl broke her femur, another police document states.
The girl's parents are in their late 30s and late 40s, according to police records. They were “visibly upset and in tears” when Jaramillo later interviewed them at Children’s Hospital.
The parents will not be charged with a crime, and the city has since installed tamper-proof locks on all the hotel rooms’ sliding doors. Those locks allow the doors to safely open a small amount for airflow. A city staff member will also accompany the staff of The Salvation Army, which runs the shelter, as they conduct weekly safety checks of rooms.
Multiple police officers investigated the case, interviewing other residents at the shelter and digging into its records. The former hotel is 45 years old and hosts just more than 200 families — about half of them immigrants.
The family, including the parents, the girl and an infant, moved into the room on April 28.
Records show the family complained as early as June 13 about a broken air conditioner, and on June 11, added complaints about roaches and bed bugs. The temperature surpassed 85 degrees at night, leaving the family’s 2-month-old unable to sleep at night.
The city had rebuilt the hotel’s HVAC plant in April, but issues kept cropping up with individual rooms, said mayoral spokesperson Jon Ewing. Several other seventh-floor residents also reported “unbearable heat” and problems with pests and maintenance. During an investigation, an officer noted that he began to sweat within 10 minutes of entering the room, even with the door open.
Officers “observed several small children and infants living in these poor conditions,” including some with health conditions. In fact, one source in the police investigation said “all” the hotel’s residents had similar complaints. The sliding doors were also a common source of concern.
“Some residents had barrica[d]ed their own sliding doors out of concern their children may fall as they heard about the victim’s fall,” an officer’s report states. One woman said she had fruitlessly asked for fixes to her own sliding door.
Salvation Army staff told police that rooms are checked weekly, but there is no record kept of those checks, unless a violation is found. The organization has no digital management system for tracking work orders and communication with the city; instead, that’s handled by phone, email and text, according to the police report.
At some point, the parents of the child who fell had asked to “change rooms due to unbearable heat and bug infestation,” though it’s not clear when they asked. They were initially refused due to a lack of vacancy, the police report states.
“Our review shows the family first reported A/C issues in June, which were repaired, but the unit began malfunctioning again shortly after,” the city statement read.
The next repair was set to take longer, due to a wait for replacement parts, so The Salvation Army offered to move the family to another room on July 1. That offer was “respectfully declined,” according to the city’s statement. It’s unclear why, although a note in the Salvation Army’s records made an unclear reference to heat and bugs.
Meanwhile, a shelter staffer said she had been trying for “several months” to get the city to secure the windows. City workers began installing more robust locks in June, but hadn’t gotten to the family’s room before the girl fell.
Workers had previously secured the glass doors with epoxy and screws, but multiple residents had removed the locks to get airflow, as documented by an attorney. A police officer noted that he was able to open the door in the family’s room by using a broom to move a bolt. A sticker on the door warned that opening the door could result in eviction.
The family has already moved to another shelter, Ewing said.
