The Costa Rican resort where Miller Gardner, the son of New York Yankees legend Brett Gardner, was found dead has hit back at authorities’ recent findings.
The 14-year-old suddenly died during a family vacation at the at the Arenas Del Mar Beachfront & Rainforest Resort on March 21 with Costa Rica’s Judicial Investigations Agency (OIJ) announcing Monday that he may have died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Randall Zúñiga, general director of the OIJ, said in a press conference that high levels of the dangerous gas had been found in the hotel room where the Gardner family had been staying.
Yet, in a shocking turn of events, less than 24 hours later the hotel has adamantly denied the findings.
‘The levels in the hotel room were non-existent and non-lethal. There was an error in this initial reporting,’ a spokesperson for the resort told the New York Post.
Zúñiga said that an investigation carried out Friday has found that that there were ‘high levels of carbon monoxide contamination’ in the family’s hotel room.
Brett Gardner’s son Miller, 14, may have died as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning
‘The initial investigative findings indicate that the incident was due to this contamination, with levels as high as 600 parts per million detected — when the appropriate level in this case should be zero,’ Zúñiga stated.
However, the resort refuted the claim, saying that the high levels of carbon monoxide were detected in a ‘mechanical room that guests do not occupy,’ rather than the guest room itself.
The Gardners’ guest room has since been closed off ‘out of an abundance of caution’ as they ‘await for conclusive results to confirm the cause of this unfortunate death,’ Arenas Del Mar added.
Zúñiga has stated Monday that the OIJ believed that ‘some form of contamination may have reached the guest rooms’ from the mechanical room.
Carbon monoxide poisoning has not yet been confirmed as the official cause of death as officials await the final toxicology results amid the ongoing investigation.
However, Zúñiga did stress that an investigative team specializing in dangerous gases carried out the inspection inside the Gardner family’s hotel room under the jurisdiction of the fire department Friday, leading to the discovery of the perilously high levels of carbon monoxide.
‘That led us to the line of investigation that this person [Miller] could have died from inhaling these dangerous gases,’ he explained.
The high-end resort, where reservations cost as much as $1,300 per night, has reportedly slashed its prices with its top-end rooms now said to be listed for $998.
More to follow.
