The family of a college student who died after drinking 'tainted' alcohol at an upscale Mexican resort has filed a lawsuit accusing the company of negligence.
The family of Wisconsin student Abbey Conner, who was 20 when she died in Playa del Carmen in January 2017, filed the lawsuit against Iberostar resort on Wednesday in Florida.
The suit alleges that Iberostar and its Spanish parent company 'knew that alcoholic beverages being served at the Hotel Iberostar Paraiso del Mar were tainted, substandard, poisonous, unfit for human consumption and/or otherwise failed to meet bare minimum standards for food and beverage safety'.
The complaint lays out in detail how Abbey drowned in the shallow end of the hotel's pool just hours after arriving for winter break with her brother Austin, mom and stepdad.
Wisconsin college student Abbey Conner (above) was 20 when she died in Playa del Carmen in January 2017 after drinking a tainted shot and drowning in the resort pool
Abbey (left) was on winter break with her mother and stepfather (together center) when she and her brother Austin (right) both became incapacitated in the resort's pool
Abbey and Austin were swimming in the pool soon after arriving at Iberostar at 3.30pm on January 7, 2017 when they were offered tequila shots from the swim-up bar, according to the suit.
Austin, 22, has said he remembers swimming around for a little while after that, and then suddenly 'the lights went out'.
Other guests alerted the hotel staff that Abbey and Austin were drowning in the pool. Hotel employees found Abbey floating face down and Austin kicking and splashing in distress, the complaint states. They were rushed to a hospital.
Meanwhile, mother Ginny and stepfather John were waiting in the hotel lobby for the two children to join them for dinner. Finally, they asked hotel staff to call Abbey and Austin's room, and were informed what had happened.
At the hospital, they found that Austin had regained consciousness, but Abbey was had a broken collar bone and remained unconscious after prolonged oxygen deprivation.
Doctors told Ginny and John that Abbey had to be transferred to an intensive care unit in Cancun - but demanded a $6,371.13 payment plus a $10,000 deposit for the Cancun hospital before they would transfer her, the lawsuit says.
One of the pools at Hotel Iberostar Paraiso del Mar is seen above. Austin and Abbey were offered shots from the swim-up bar when they suddenly became incapacitated
Abbey, who was found floating face-down in the pool, had her life support removed after being declared brain-dead. Austin suffered a severe concussion after hitting his head, but survived
Eventually, the family was able to have Abbey airlifted to Broward Health Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
There, doctors informed the family that she was brain dead. Because Abbey had long expressed her desire to be an organ donor, her body was kept alive until recipients could be found.
The incident sparked a multi-part investigation into tainted alcohol in Mexico by the Milwaukee Sentinel Journal, which found over 100 accounts of travelers who blacked out after consuming a small amount of alcohol a all-inclusive resorts in Mexico.
The report detailed accounts of American tourists who had been robbed and raped after becoming incapacitated by apparently tainted or poisoned alcohol. Others reported being extorted for medical services.
The investigation even found rampant claims that tourists who tried to warn others about their horror experiences but had their descriptions removed from hotel review site TripAdvisor.
Abbey was airlifted to a US hospital but was found to be brain dead. She had insisted on being an organ donor and her body was kept alive until recipients could be lined up
Iberostar, which owns the Paraiso del Mar hotel (above) where the incident took place, has denied that it is responsible for Abbey's death
After the US State Department issued a travel warning last July, Mexican authorities raided 31 resorts and seized 10,000 gallons of illicit alcohol from an illegal distillery in Playa del Carmen.
The lawsuit alleges that the bootleg distillery was in fact a distribution and delivery service that Iberostar contracted with to supply alcohol to the resort.
Illicit booze, often disguised as the genuine article by being served in the empty bottles of legitimate brands, can contain dangerous amounts of methanol, a deadly toxin.
Iberostar has said it adheres to strict regulatory standards and only purchases 'sealed bottles (of alcohol) that satisfy all standards required by the designated regulatory authorities.'
Gary Davidson, an attorney with Miami-based Diaz Reus & Targ who is representing the family, told the Journal Sentinel that the notion that Abbey and Austin Conner were simply drunk is impossible.
'Do people get drunk? Of course. Do people get sick from alcohol? Of course. But people do not, two people, do not lose control of their bodily functions at the same time in the shallow end of a swimming pool,' Davidson said.
He noted that Abbey and Austin had very different body sizes and both became simultaneously incapacitated. 'There's a big difference between being drunk and losing self control.
'Combine that with what we know has happened in the Playa del Carmen area over the last few years ... Clearly there is a fundamental problem, or there was at the time when Abbey died, as a result of having consumed this concoction, whatever it was, which was portrayed as normal alcohol, which it was not.'
Link hienalouca.com
https://hienalouca.com/2018/11/29/family-sues-mexican-resort-where-college-student-20-died-from-tainted-alcohol/
Main photo article The family of a college student who died after drinking ‘tainted’ alcohol at an upscale Mexican resort has filed a lawsuit accusing the company of negligence.
The family of Wisconsin student Abbey Conner, who was 20 when she died in Playa del Carmen in January 2017, filed the lawsuit...
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Emily Ratajkowski is a showman, on and off the stage. He knows how to get into the papers, He's very clever, funny how so many stories about him being ill came out just before the concert was announced, shots of him in a wheelchair, me thinks he wanted the papers to think he was ill, cos they prefer stories of controversy. Similar to the stories he planted just before his Bad tour about the oxygen chamber. Worked a treat lol. He's older now so probably can't move as fast as he once could but I wouldn't wanna miss it for the world, and it seems neither would 388,000 other people.
Dianne Reeves US News HienaLouca
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