RALEIGH (AP) — North Carolina police point to a faulty pool water heater as the source of carbon monoxide that killed an 11-year-old South Carolina boy last weekend and a Washington couple who slept in the same Boone motel room about two months earlier.
Boone police said Wednesday that plumbing investigators called in to look through the Best Western Plus Blue Ridge Plaza pointed to the water heater below room 225 as the source of the killer gas. Police say the exhaust system for the pool water heater was deficient.
The gas is being blamed for the death of 11-year-old Jeffrey Williams of Rock Hill, S.C., on Saturday. That was nearly two months after carbon monoxide in the same room killed 73-year-old Daryl Dean Jenkins and 72-year-old Shirley Mae Jenkins of Longview, Wash.