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Background: Portland Marriott Downtown Waterfront is shown Wednesday, April 20, 2011, in Portland, Oregon. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)/Inset: Jermaine Lamont Peay booking photo (Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office).
A U.S. Air Force major from Mississippi and his wife are suing Marriott International for $160 million after he says he awoke horrified inside of a North Carolina hotel room to a perfect stranger in his bed performing oral sex on him.
According to the 16-page complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, the alleged assault took place on April 8, 2022, at the Marriott Hotel on West Trade Street in Charlotte.
The victim was not identified in the complaint, although he has named his accused assailant: Jermaine Lamont Peay, 28.
Arrest records for the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office confirm Peay was arrested in May 2022 and charged with felony larceny, burglary first degree, second degree forcible sex offense and larceny after breaking and entering.
According to the federal complaint, the victim alleges he was on his way to Orlando, Florida, from his home in Mississippi for two days of mandatory Air Force training when he was caught in Charlotte due a series of canceled flights. With permission from his superiors to return home to Mississippi, the man said he was racing to return to his family “in time to attend a father-daughter dance at his church.”
Further last-minute cancellations forced the plaintiff to book a room in Charlotte and he opted to stay with Marriott where he had a “Titanium Elite status” the lawsuit states.
While waiting for a ride-share, the victim says he ran into a friend and former Green Beret who accompanied him in the car to the Charlotte Marriott City Center Hotel. The property was near what the plaintiff described as a “large homeless population” and when they got to the property on West Trade Street, the victim said he was stopped by a panhandler who asked him for cash as he was getting his luggage to the staff and a valet attendant was nearby.
Long before the break-in happened at his room, the victim says this proved it was reasonably foreseeable that a guest may be assaulted and that Marriott should have known to keep its property more secure. Citing a series of crime statistics for the surrounding region, the plaintiff alleges that in 2021, a full year prior to his assault, Charlotte Metropolitan Police officers arrested 13,792 people for violent crimes like assault and robbery.
The plaintiff says Peay had previously trespassed at the hotel and was known to burgle or assault guests.
On the night of his assault, however, no one appeared to notice Peay slip in. The plaintiff says when he retired to his room, “the self-closing and self-locking door to his guestroom was not functioning property and the door to his room did not properly latch shut or lock.”
He claims that Marriott has electronic sensors equipped to “transmit an electronic record” to the hotel when a guest’s door is opened or closed, the lawsuit contends, and accordingly, Marriott, he says, “should have known that the self-closing door was malfunctioning and not properly closing prior to and during John Doe’s stay at the hotel.”
According to the complaint, it was “in the early hours” of April 8 when the victim was “woken up to an assailant performing oral sex on him without his consent.”
“The assailant, Jermaine Peay, had put John Doe’s penis in his mouth while John Doe slept, and had been violently thrashing his head up and down with John Doe’s penis in his mouth. John Doe had never met, seen, or otherwise interacted with Jermaine Peay prior to waking up to find Peay sexually assaulting him in his hotel room,” the complaint states. “John Doe howled in terror and lashed out to punch Jermaine Peay and throw him off of John Doe.”
After the scuffle, the plaintiff says Peay fled with his wallet and cellphone as well as a pair of pants and a shirt.
Marriott staff allegedly told the plaintiff when he reached them at the front desk after the attack that “we know who he is” when he described Peay to them though he was not a guest.
Suing for negligence, deceptive trade practices, he seeks combined punitive and compensatory damages of $160 million.
Public online records from the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office indicate Peay has been arrested before including in July for burglary, larceny and second degree sex offenses. He also faced charges in February 2022 for simple assault, resisting public officers and assault of campus police, arrest records show. In 2021, arrest records show he was charged with carrying a concealed weapon, possessing drug paraphernalia and going armed to the terror of people, a misdemeanor.
It is unclear if Peay has retained an attorney for the charges he faces connected to the plaintiff’s lawsuit filed this month.
An attorney for the plaintiff did not immediately return a request for comment, nor did a spokesperson or attorney for Marriott.
