Background: The Lamplighter Inn in Eureka, Calif. (YouTube/KRCR). Insets, top to bottom: Samuel Hanna, Jon Davidi (YouTube/KRCR).
Two people died in the same northern California motel room just five days apart — and the father of one of the victims says the motel”s owners are to blame.
On Feb. 21, a woman was found dead in a room at the Lamplighter Inn in Eureka, California, a small port city around 100 miles south of the Oregon border. As reported by local ABC affiliate KRCR, which also obtained the complaint, police officers and firefighters responded to a call about two unconscious people found in the motel at around 2 p.m. One of those people, a 37-year-old woman, was pronounced dead at the scene, and the other was taken to a hospital.
Authorities originally suspected a drug overdose. However, five days later — around noon on Feb. 26 — another report of two unconscious people in the same Lamplighter Inn motel room came in, and again, one woman was pronounced dead. The other guest was rushed to the hospital in critical condition. Although authorities again initially suspected that an overdose was the cause, Humboldt Bay firefighters reportedly showed signs of exposure to carbon monoxide and tested the air in the room.
They apparently discovered elevated carbon monoxide levels — and found no carbon monoxide detectors in the room. The city shut down the hotel immediately.
Now, the father of one of the women, Samantha Hanna — the woman who was found on Feb. 26 — has filed a lawsuit against Harjinder K. Heer and Surinder S. Heer, accusing them of failing to make the motel room safe, despite having ample notice of the danger.
“Prior to [Samantha’s] death, Defendants were on actual and/or constructive notice that the Lamplighter Motel presented a lethal carbon monoxide hazard to guests,” the complaint alleges, noting that a “strikingly similar incident occurred at the same motel and in the same room” just five days earlier.
“Rather than immediately shutting down operations, conducting a competent inspection, identifying and eliminating the source of carbon monoxide, installing and confirming the presence of required detectors, and ensuring the room was safe for human occupancy, Defendants failed to adequately remedy the condition and continued to expose unsuspecting guests to a known deadly danger,” the complaint says. “Defendants’ conduct was despicable and carried out with a conscious disregard for the rights and safety of motel guests, including [Samantha].”
The lawsuit, filed by Samantha Hanna’s father Samuel Hanna, notes that in July 2025, the Lamplighter was cited for safety violations during its annual fire inspection and alleges that the danger worsened considerably by February 2026. At that point, according to the complaint, “the danger had become so severe that even responding fire personnel experienced symptoms of carbon monoxide exposure upon entering the room[.]”
That 2025 inspection, according to Hanna’s lawyers, put the motel on notice — and should have spurred its owners into action.
“[H]ad Defendants closed the motel and taken the Premises out of service after the February 21 incident, as basic safety required, Decedent’s death on February 26, 2026 would never have happened,” the complaint says.
“The Lamplighter Motel was not a property that should have remained open to the public,” the complaint adds.
On Friday, the Eureka Police Department told Law&Crime that there were no updates to the investigation that it could share.
Lawyers say that the property owners must be held accountable for their failures “so that a type of leak like this doesn’t happen again.”
“We’re going to be engaged in a discovery process for the next several months to learn and get as much information as we can, and then we’re going to proceed to a jury trial as soon as the court gives us an available date,” attorney Jon Davidi told KRCR.
Samuel Hanna alleges wrongful death and seeks an unspecified amount of damages, including punitive damages.
“She was my best friend and above and beyond, she was just an amazing young woman,” he said. “It’s just not something a monetary value is going to fix; it demands justice.”
