Originally published in the Denver Gazette
Carol Gonzales thought she and her daughter were safe in Room 112 at the Longmont Econo Lodge. They didn’t know that a man determined to hurt them was in the lobby asking for a key, according to a civil lawsuit.
The Denver Gazette obtained police reports that showed that, on Jan. 3, 2023, a man who was a stranger to front desk employees, was handed a key card to Gonzales’ room, even though he was not a registered guest of the hotel.
With the key, Cody Czichos entered the room and physically assaulted Gonzales, then 69 years old, who called 911 and was transferred by the hotel to a separate room, the civil complaint said.
Gonzales’ daughter, then 38, was now alone in the room and had fallen asleep. Her door was locked.
Czichos fled, emerged from hiding, returned to the crime scene with a knife and let himself in a second time, according to the complaint. The 6-foot-5, 200-pound Czichos straddled Gonzales’ daughter on the bed and stabbed her in her face and head, slashed her hands and stomped on her head, the complaint said, nearly killing her.
Both women survived the attacks, and last week, a Weld County jury awarded them more than$4 million.
Attorney Matthey Haltzman believed the award proved that the jury “heard the message loud and clear.”
Its verdict, he said, “stands as a powerful testament to the horrific pain the victims experienced as a result of the Econo Lodge’s negligence,” Haltzman told The Denver Gazette.
Premiere Hospitality, Inc, the company that owns the Econo Lodge and markets under the name Choice Hotels, did not reply to a request for comment on the judgment. An Econo Lodge front desk clerk offered no comment.
In court filings, the hotel’s attorneys, Baker Law Group out of Greenwood Village, argued that Gonzales and her daughter had a responsibility to take reasonable steps to avoid harm to themselves. Those responsibilities included making sure the door was locked from the inside, as well as taking the step to notify the front desk that Czichos was not to be given a key.
There have been other similar incidents of travelers becoming victims of crimes, such as rape and physical assault, in hotels from Austin, Texas to Milwaukee and New York City. Experts noted there are more than 162,000 hotels in the U.S. and that, relatively, crimes against customers are rare.
In 2017, a California jury awarded a woman $3.5 million after a two-week trial in a case in which a Holiday Inn Express, where she was staying, failed to check the identification of a man who requested a key to her room and raped her, according to her lawyers.
The Longmont Econo Lodge at 10811 West Interstate 25 Frontage Road in the Gonzales case has had its share of police activity.
In the year preceding the January 2023 attacks, Weld County Sheriff’s deputies responded to the hotel 173 times for complaints ranging from trespassing and drug activity to disturbances with a weapon. The Econo Lodge is an extended stay facility, which often houses people who live there for weeks at a time.
Hotel Safety
Of the thousands of hotels that dot the American landscape, quality ranges from fancy to bare bones.
However, there is one strict rule which binds them — front desk employees are trained never to give out room keys to people who are not registered under a reservation or who have no government identification, hotel security experts said.
In the Gonzales case, this is exactly what happened in early January of 2023.
Czichos was Gonzales’ daughter’s former boyfriend, a man whom she met at church. They invited him over for pizza the night of the attack, the complaint stated. When he started behaving strangely, they asked him to leave and locked the door, according to the police report.
Czichos left but returned to the lobby, ranting about how Gonzales felt that he “was not good enough for her daughter,” according sheriff’s documents. Two front desk clerks eventually handed him a card-key to Room 112 without asking for his identification. They also failed to notice his name was not on the room reservation, and they did not call Gonzales to confirm that it was okay to give him a key, the complaint said.
Czichos was arrested at a nearby bar under suspicion of attempted murder and, in April 2024, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison in a plea deal.
With just weeks before 2025 summer travel adventures begin, Sal Caccavale, a public safety expert with Global Hospitality Security Solutions, recommended that travelers should not assume that built-in hotel security measures will insulate them from a room break-in.
In short? The responsibility to ensure one’s safety in a hotel room should be no different than one’s home, he said.
“When you’re at home, do you leave your front door open?” Caccavale said. “Do you double lock it and turn up the deadbolt?”
He also offered several other hotel security tips:
The search for a hotel: read online comments
Positive comments are great to read but Caccavale said to not to pass over the bad reviews, as they are equally as important for any hint as to what the hotel is experiencing. The more recent, the better. Also, he said, people should search the hotel in the news.
No one should know the room number
When checking in, if the front desk clerk publicly announces one’s room number in front of other people, the client should ask for another room.
Remember the room number
Get rid of the packet that has the check-in date and room number written on it. Store the number in one’s head or write it on a piece of paper and stick it in a purse or wallet.
Check the room for possible uninvited guests before settling in
When he first gets into his room, Caccavale said he looks under the bed in case someone might be hiding out there. He also checks behind the curtains and in the closet and, in a flashback to the Bates Motel, he peeks behind the shower curtain.
“It’s sad because hotel crime can occur anywhere,” he said. “You have to take your own precautions.”
Caccavale advised people to make sure any first-floor windows don’t open past 4 inches, especially at a lower level, as “you don’t want people climbing into your bedroom.”
It’s good advice for upstairs rooms as well to keep people from falling out, he said.
Is the front door sufficiently locked?
Make sure the hotel door is self-closing, self-locking and that the dead bolt is functioning properly, he added. Hotel doors should also have a night latch and a peep hole with a view of whomever may be standing outside of the door. If it is a connecting room, make sure there’s a deadbolt and a minimum of two locks on the connecting door.
Odds and ends to look out for
Hotel parking lots should be well-lit. All hotels should display working sprinklers and smoke detectors. Caccavale travels with a portable carbon monoxide detector and keeps it in the “on” position.
“I am not going to rely on another party to make certain I’m safe in my guest room and not be impacted by carbon monoxide. It’s odorless, you can’t see it It puts you to sleep and you don’t wake up,” he said.
No metal keys
Lastly, a person should not stay in a room that uses a metal key, which may have been in dozens of hands with as many opportunities to copy them.
“We don’t know how many of those keys are floating around,” said Caccavale. “Only stay at hotels with electronic door locks.”
Today, many hotels offer the option to use a cellphone as a digital key, which is linked to the hotel app.