Mother of teen found dead in walk-in freezer reaches $10 million settlement

The mother of a Chicago teen found dead of hypothermia in a hotel walk-in freezer in 2017 agreed to a $10 million settlement this week, court records show.

The teen, Ken’neka Jenkins, visited the Crowne Plaza Chicago-O’Hare Hotel in Rosemont, Illinois, around 1 a.m. on September 9, 2017, according to a lawsuit her mother, Tereasa Martin, filed against CPO Hospitality LLC. , the organization that oversees the hotel, and other parties.

Ms. Jenkins, 19, was last seen by her friends around 2:30 a.m. leaving a room on the hotel’s ninth floor after attending a party, the lawsuit said.

After it became clear that Ms. Jenkins was missing, hotel employees assured her mother that they would “monitor and review all security cameras and footage,” according to the lawsuit.

But they failed to do so properly, the suit says. If they had, they would have seen Ms. Jenkins “enter the kitchen and been able to locate her, which would have prevented her death,” the lawsuit said.

In surveillance video, Ms. Jenkins was “visibly disoriented, confused and lost within their premises” before entering an abandoned kitchen, where she later died in the freezer, according to the documentation.

According to the lawsuit, the defendants failed to properly secure the freezer, which was located in an unattended area of ​​the hotel, and to stop the unlawful party her daughter had attended at the hotel.

The settlement, reached on Tuesday, included $6,000 for Ms. Jenkins’ funeral and about $3.5 million for attorneys’ fees and costs.

Attorneys for Ms. Jenkins and CPO Hospitality did not respond to requests for comment.

The case prompted amateur sleuths to analyze widely distributed videos of the hotel party, paying close attention to its audio and Ms. Jenkins’ appearances in it.

Social media users criticized police for acting too slowly, saying that if Ms. Jenkins had been a white woman instead of a black woman, law enforcement would have made investigating her disappearance a priority.

Police in Rosemont previously said they had left “no stone unturned” in their investigation after she was reported missing.

The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled that Ms. Jenkins died of hypothermia and said her death was accidental. The office added that alcohol and topiramate, a prescription drug used to prevent migraines and control attacks, were “significant contributing factors.”

Sheelagh McNeill research contributed.