Pilot bitten by bat after swarm invades his Sheraton hotel room, costing him over $100K for rabies shots: lawsuit

This hotel stay really bites.
A California pilot was awoken in the middle of the night by a swarm of bats invading his hotel room, only to later realize one of the winged beasts had bitten him — costing him over $100,000 for rabies shots, a lawsuit alleges.
The commercial aviator — whose name is being withheld to protect his job — was staying at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel on Aug. 29 while in town for a work training when the batty incident unfolded, according to the Denver suit.
The pilot, a 46-year-old married father of one, woke up around 2:30 in the morning to “commotion,” his lawyer said.
“Imagine you’re sleeping in a hotel room and you wake up and you see bats flying around. That’s scary,” attorney Edward Lomena told The Post.
“He heard them flying around, and he woke up, and then he saw them flying around,” Lomena added.
The pilot notified hotel maintenance staff, who removed the pests, but didn’t offer to relocate him to another room, the suit alleges.
He noticed there was a hole in the room’s air conditioning unit, “which appeared to provide access for the bats to enter the room,” so he shoved a towel to close up the opening, the court documents claim.
The exhausted dad finally fell asleep and later awoke to see a single bat was still lurking in the room near the top of the window curtains, the filing claims.
Animal control was called in to remove the last bat. The workers informed the pilot that several of the fanged critters in the area had tested positive for rabies and told him to get treated immediately, according to the suit and Lomena.
The aviator later discovered he had been bitten on his foot. He had to get a series of rabies shots near his home in Anaheim, costing him over $100,000 in medical bills, according to the suit and his attorney.
The father was left terrified of getting rabies and leaving behind his wife to be a single mom, Lomena said.
“He thought he might have rabies, so he was afraid,” Lomena said. “He thought, ‘Am I going to die? Am I going to leave my wife and kid without a father?’”
The lawyer said his client had trouble sleeping in hotel rooms after the horrifying ordeal, which became detrimental to his job as a pilot, in which overnight stays are a necessity.
“Every time he goes to his hotel rooms, he’s always a little nervous. He’s always looking around, looking for openings, trying to figure out any way for any type of animal to get into his room,” Lomena said.
The pilot did engage in settlement talks with Sheraton’s parent company, Marriott International, but they offered a paltry sum to get him to “go away,” stating that these types of things happen at no one’s fault, the lawyer claims.
The pilot just wants to be compensated for his medical bills and for the traumatic incident, his lawyer explained.
“We’ve tried to be fair with Marriott, but they’re not willing to cooperate with us,” he said.
Marriott didn’t immediately return a request for comment Wednesday morning.