Woman raped in hotel garage receives $6.6 million judgment
In May 2009, Kira Wahlstrom was attacked while walking to her car, parked inside a Radisson Hotel parking garage.
She was dragged by her hair from an elevator and raped in a stairwell, according to a report by The Boston Globe. Another woman had been raped in the same garage 12 days earlier, by the same man.
It only took a day-and-a-half of deliberations for a Suffolk Superior Court jury to find the company that owns the hotel, and the company that manages it, negligent for failing to provide acceptable security, the Globe said.
The jury returned a $4 million verdict against the hotel’s owner, JPA IV Management Co., and its management company, JPA I Management Co. With interest, the amount increases to about $6.6 million, according to the Globe.
The attorney representing the companies, Lawrence Kenney, said he and his clients respectfully disagreed with the verdict.
“The JPA defendants are confident they did everything that was reasonable to address this potentially happening,’’ he said, according to the Globe.
Wahlstrom’s attorneys said security staff at the hotel knew of the previous rape, but did not warn garage customers or increase security in the parking garage, located on Stuart Street in downtown Boston.
Read the full Globe report here.
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