Lawsuit: Bedbugs Cost H-F Coach Her Dreadlocks

A coach at Homewood-Flossmoor High School says she was forced to cut off her dreadlocks after the bedbugs bit at a Palatine hotel in October 2012—and she wants the hotel to pay.

Assistant tennis coach Donna Brumfield had to do away with the 'locks that took her 13 years to grow, due to the unwelcome guests at Holiday Inn Express, 1550 E. Dundee Rd., Sun-Times Media reports. The personal injury lawsuit filed in Cook County Circuit Court seeks $50,000 in damages. 

"If you know how long it takes to grow dreadlocks, you understand the trauma of losing my hair," Brumfield told reporters.

The lawsuit claims that while staying at the hotel for a tennis meet nearby, Brumfield watched as exterminators inspected her hotel room after bedbugs were found in an adjacent room. She was relocated to another room but the bugs had already left their mark: "red bumps extended from her hands and arms to her shoulders and neck," the lawsuit alleges. The bugs bite at night, leaving behind itchy red welts in a straight-line pattern.

Pest control company Orkin recently ranked Chicago the worst city for bed bugs. Orkin bases its list on the number of bed bug treatments it performed in 2013. Chicago was joined in the unfortunate Top 10 list by, in reverse order: Indianapolis, Denver, Washington, D.C., Dayton, Cleveland/Akron/Canton, Cincinnati, Detroit, Columbus and at No. 2, Los Angeles.

The ordeal has not exactly left Brumfield itching to travel again.

"I’ve traveled to foreign countries and never had anything like this happen. Here at a nice hotel in the northwest suburbs? That was the most shocking thing for me," she told reporters.

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