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Friday, March 29, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

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EDWARDSVILLE, Ill. (CN) - A guest claims a Holiday Inn employee gave police the wrong room number, causing the cops to burst into his room while he slept and pull a gun on him - though the cops were looking for a woman he knew nothing about, who was several rooms away from him.

Dan Little says he was staying at a Holiday Inn Express in Pembroke, N.C., when he was nearly shot to death, in September.

Little says he was "asleep in his lawfully rented room, and unbeknown to him, members of law enforcement arrived ... looking for another person that was in no way known by or affiliated with the plaintiff."

He claims that "an employee of the Holiday Inn Express, without checking or looking into any hotel records, incorrectly advised the law enforcement officers that this other person had rented the room the plaintiff was staying in."

A simple "check of the Holiday Inn Express guest logs would have revealed that the person being sought by law enforcement was in a room several doors away from plaintiff," Little says.

He says plainclothes officers broke through the door into his room, and did not show police identification. This caused Little "to draw his pistol in fear for his life."

A cop shouted, "He has a gun" and drew his own pistol, Little says.

Little and the cops figured it out without firing shots, and "the officer was able to determine that plaintiff was not the female suspect that he was looking for," according to the complaint.

Little says that "the Holiday Inn employee that originally told the officers that their target was in the wrong room looked up the correct room, and acknowledged that he made a mistake and had not looked up the information before providing the law enforcement officers with plaintiff's room number."

Little, an Illinois resident, seeks damages of $50,000 to $75,000 from the Intercontinental Hotels Group dba Holiday Inn Express.

He is represented by Thomas Maag of Wood River.

The complaint does not say what became of the woman.

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