A British couple in their 60s, traveling in Egypt with their daughter and three grandchildren, are believed to have died after staff spread bed bug pesticide in the adjacent hotel room.
“I wouldn’t say the work was really professional,” a witness to the events, German tourist Dominik Bibi, said in a statement heard at Blackburn Coroner’s Court in the United Kingdom on Tuesday, according to the BBC.
John and Susan Cooper, ages 69 and 63, reportedly died during a trip to Hurghada on Egypt’s Red Sea coast in 2018 after spending the night in a hotel room whose side door led to another room treated with pesticides Bed bugs, an investigation revealed Tuesday.
The two sexagenarians staying at the Aqua Magic Hotel became so sick over the course of the evening that the grandfather picked up Molly, his 12-year-old granddaughter, who was supposed to be sleeping in the room, back to his mother, Kelly Ormerod, for the night .
Except the two Brits from Lancashire didn’t show up for lunch the next day. At that time, her daughter found her seriously ill, she emotionally told the court.
His father’s condition then deteriorated rapidly, including breathing difficulties. According to British media reports, he was pronounced dead at the scene.
“His eyes were kind of… a glassy, stare,” Kelly Ormerod noted with tears in her eyes.
His mother became delirious before being rushed to hospital, where she lost her life shortly afterwards.
According to the investigation, the couple died after possible exposure to an “infectious biological agent or toxic chemicals,” although the hypothesis of carbon monoxide poisoning or food poisoning has been ruled out, according to the BBC.
For his part, the resident of the adjacent room, which was connected by a side door, said that when he entered the room he noticed a strange smell like mold or damp and “lots of bed bugs in the bed and under it,” he said in writing, according to British media.
Later in the day, further down the corridor, he is said to have seen hotel workers with two or three liter cans of pesticides who had just left the room to seal the room with tape, according to the BBC.
The coroner’s inquest continues.