Jonathan Pitts, the 36-year-old murder suspect, who was given a personal guarantee of recognition this week because Dallas officials may have lost evidence in his case, is accused of fatally shooting Shun Handy in 2019 at Han Gil Hotel Town, northwest Dallas . Fall is the first one known to potentially be affected by data loss.
The cell phone killing is by no means the only violation that occurred in Han Gil, a place a federal judge once described as the “Hotel of Secrets.” The building – which opened as a nursing home in 1965 and was just 300 meters from an elementary school – has long been known as a drug dealing hotspot, and authorities say it was the site of overdose, sexual abuse, beatings, and torture.
Here’s what you need to know:
‘Addict’s Paradise’ closed in 2019
A woman who told the Dallas Morning News that she stayed at the hotel said it was “an addict’s paradise with endless dope and countless ways to get it even if you didn’t have the money.”
A fire inspector who checked the building in 2018 reported seeing drugs, scales, cash and firearms in sight. The proceedings in the hotel rooms were recorded by the owner, the prosecutor said, armed men guarded rooms where cartel members did business.
Dozens of federal agents raided the hotel in March 2019, and prosecutors, calling it a “safe haven” for drug dealers, obtained an injunction to close it. Ten people were charged with drug offenses.
Federal Attorney Rick Calvert later said, “The Han Gil Hotel was one of the most dangerous places I have ever come across.”
Terrible deaths, crime were the order of the day
Although it will never be known how many people died there, authorities said the Han Gil claimed a number of lives – some killed, others succumbed to drugs.
Among the overdose victims was a woman identified only as LR who stayed in the bathroom of Room 342 for several hours after her death. Her body was eventually wrapped in a duvet and dumped in a remote part of East Oak Cliff.
After Justin Bruckman (21) took an overdose in the hotel, his friends were not allowed to call the emergency number for fear of the police showing up. They drove him to a hospital where he died.
Handy, 22, was killed after getting into an argument with another man at Han Gil. The other man – who authorities say is Pitts – shot and killed his cell phone, grabbed his dog and fled.
Videos recovered from the hotel showed a woman being burned with a blowtorch and beaten with the leg of a chair, and corpses being carried out of rooms. And Salvation Army volunteers working to get prostitutes off the streets said they met women there who were “so obviously harassed and so obviously brutalized.”
Owners and traders were put in jail
The hotel’s owner, Amos Mun, pleaded guilty to a state charge of maintaining a drug-affected building in August 2019 and was sentenced to 20 years in prison, the maximum sentence, four months later.
When sentenced, Mun claimed that he “didn’t know much about what was going on in those rooms” and that his only mistake was buying a hotel in a poor part of town.
But US District Judge Karen Scholer didn’t buy it, telling Mun that “you saw it, walked past it, encouraged it, benefited from it”.
And in his pleadings, Mun admitted that he was charging drug dealers an excessive daily rate, or “drug tax,” which allowed them to openly sell heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and other drugs in his rooms.
The hotel’s chief drug dealer, Eric DeWayne “Stuff” Freeman, and his enforcer, Kendrick Lamel “Kiki” Washington, each received 30 years’ imprisonment separately.
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The building of the Han Gil Hotel no longer exists.(DEA Dallas Department)
Hotel has since been demolished
As part of his declaration of consent, Mun forfeited the property to the federal government, which then sold it to a developer on condition that the building be demolished. The demolition began in June 2020 and was carried out in stages.
“With the demolition of the building we closed a chapter in the horror story of Han Gil,” said Erin Nealy Cox, then US attorney for the Northern District of Texas – and added that the investigation into the criminal activities at the hotel would continue.
The owner planned a residential and commercial complex on the property; The county records indicate that the deed was transferred to another owner in May.
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