A little over two weeks after a deadly fire killed six people at the Knights Inn in Endwell, a former resident filed a notice of claim against Broome County, alleging they didn’t use “reasonable care” when choosing the hotel as temporary shelter for people seeking assistance with the county’s Department of Social Services.
Kimberly Crooks and her son had been living at the Knights Inn since Aug. 1, 2024, according to the court documents. Crooks was living in Room 223 when a fire broke out on June 22 around 6 a.m. Crooks said in the court filing that she lost all of her belongings in the fire.
“The Department failed to exercise reasonable care in selecting the Knights Inn as a placement and in fact, failed to investigate the safety of the location for purposes of providing those individuals eligible for public assistance and wholy dependent upon the Department to ensure that the living quarters they were placed in were safe and free from hazardous conditions and circumstances,” the court documents read.
The documents allege there is a history of safety violations, including “smoke sensors that did not work, furnace lines being held together with zip ties and multiple rooms that did not have working smoke or carbon monoxide alarms.”
The town of Union maintains fire safety and inspection reports for the hotel. Additionally, because the hotel is used by the county’s Department of Social Services, it is required by the state to be inspected every six months. Through a freedom of information request, Spectrum News 1 obtained the DSS inspection reports and town of Union fire safety inspection reports.
The most recently provided DSS inspection report from October 2025, said rooms 210, 205 and 123 needed smoke detectors replaced. There should have been another inspection done by April, however, the report was not included in the documents provided in response to the FOIA request.
Fire safety inspection reports from the town of Union show a history of violations by the Knights Inn, dating back to 2016, when it was cited that the rooms were not being protected by a fire alarm system. The Knights Inn failed an inspection in April 2025 for a variety of reasons, including broken smoke alarms in some of the rooms, unsecure electrical wires and outlets in the basement, non-functional emergency lighting, and as mentioned in the lawsuit, furnace gas lines being held together with zip ties. The Knights Inn passed inspection in December 2025 after making the necessary corrections, according to town records.
The reports also mention that the hotel did not have a sprinkler system in place.
According to records obtained through a freedom of information request, Broome County spent $9.4 million in 2025 placing families experiencing homelessness in hotels. They paid over $700,000 to the Knights Inn alone.
Kimberly Crooks’ lawyer, Ronald Benjamin, said the county should be doing a better job to ensure people’s safety.
“Just because people are down and out for whatever reason, they’re still entitled to have a safe place to live,” Benjamin said.
The Knights Inn also had a history of criminal activity, according to a log of dispatch calls that showed more than 260 calls to that address last year. An investigation by Spectrum News 1 found four registered sex offenders living at the hotel alongside families like Crooks’ as of March.
Broome County officials declined to comment Tuesday, citing the pending litigation. However, in a press conference following the fire, County Executive Jason Garnar said he believed the smoke alarms were working and that the county follows recommendations from the state as to where they place people.
“We can’t be making up our own policies and procedures. Basically the state says this is a mandate, we must do this and this is how we must do this, and that is what we do,” Garnar said.