What was supposed to be a visit of healing and treatment for a back injury turned into a horrifying ordeal for the Mistaken Chief family.
Allen Mistaken Chief came to Lethbridge to alleviate his back pain and the family was staying at a hotel.
“I couldn’t do much,” he said, wincing as he shifted in his chair. “The most I could do was shuffle to the hot tub to help with my back. While I was in there, to be able to move again, my wife and son would go swimming.
“When they’d finish up, my wife and son would shower off the chlorine. She did notice those bites, and I kind of started putting two and two together,” Mistaken Chief said. “I went to go and check his bed and I lifted the left side of the bed. I noticed at the corner of the headboard, on the sheet, there was a large bed bug.”
He said the bugs were promptly caught and put into plastic cups and brought to the front desk. Mistaken Chief said the staff seemed “standoffish and passive,” but that the hotel then enacted its bed bug policy.
After bagging up their belongings for safekeeping as the hotel dealt with the pests, the Mistaken Chiefs went to leave, but they wanted some of their clothes because it was -14, Mistaken Chief said.
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“When I had asked the lobby staff for at least a jacket, they gave me an answer that kind of set me off guard. It was that they were unauthorized to say anything about our luggage.”
He said the family found out the bags and luggage they had brought up to the front to be kept safe had actually been brought back into their room to be treated with heaters, without their knowledge.
Mistaken Chief said he demanded to have their luggage and bags returned, but that the hotel staff said they didn’t know where the bags were.
“Another maid came by and told us our luggage was thrown away,” he said.
The Mistaken Chief family recently dealt with tragedy. Just over a year ago, they suffered a still birth of a daughter, whose ashes they carried in an urn necklace. The necklace is not waterproof and Mistaken Chief’s wife took it off to shower, and in the confusion of the bug discovery, didn’t put it back on.
Mistaken Chief said the urn necklace and another heirloom had been bagged with their belongings and was thrown away.
“She was in distress. She turned to me and said: ‘I don’t know where my dad and our daughter are.’
“When I heard that they had thrown away my daughter, it honestly felt like we had lost her all over again.
“In that rage of them hearing me out, all they could say was that they were sorry, but you’ll have to speak to our lawyer.”
Global News reached out to the Best Western about the complaints but didn’t get a response.
Lethbridge police say they responded after the hotel complained about unwanted guests.
Police say hotel staff advised two guests had been moved from one room to another after reporting bed bugs. They also said a garbage bag containing personal items was mistaken for trash and thrown in the dumpster.
Police say the hotel offered to pay for the discarded items while one of guests was yelling, causing a disturbance and filming the encounter.
Police said officers stayed out of sight to avoid escalating the situation, and the parties left the hotel.
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