New York State Housing Social Services

‘A Family Trying to Survive’: Six Die at Motel Used to House Broome County’s Homeless

The Knights Inn, profiled by New York Focus and ProPublica last year, had received health and safety complaints for years.

Spencer Norris and Isabelle Taft · June 26, 2026

A motel is completely engulfed in flames, and black and gray smoke pours into the sky. A lone firefighter walks in the right side of the frame.

Six people died in a fire that swept the length of the Knights Inn in Endwell on June 22, 2026. | Endwell Fire Department

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Before 6 am on Monday, Kimberly Crooks, 53, stepped out of her room at the Knights Inn to smoke a cigarette. The Broome County Department of Social Services had placed Crooks and her 12-year-old son at the motel more than a year ago. She had become familiar with its many discomforts: an electrical system that couldn’t handle more than one appliance at a time, having to move rooms every 28 days, and hypodermic needles lying around in the parking lot where her son played.

As Crooks prepared to get her son ready for school, she heard a loud boom and saw several people running out of a room in the motel’s rear building.

“When they ran out saying ‘Fire, fire, fire!’ I saw the flames coming out of the room behind them,” she said. Crooks said she roused her son and ran from door to door, trying to wake people up and get them out.

Michelle Woolfolk sits in a chair, wearing a red t-shirt, and smiles towards the camera.

Michelle Woolfolk, better known as Auntie at the Knights Inn, had lived in the motel for about two years. Woolfolk was one of six people to die in the fire. | Courtesy of Davona Parker

In less than 10 minutes, the fire swept down and engulfed almost the entire building, including Michelle Woolfolk’s room. Woolfolk, better known as Auntie at the Knights Inn, had lived in the motel for about two years and would often have Crooks over to talk, listen to music, and paint together. Crooks said that Woolfolk suffered from chronic pain and had difficulty walking.

Woolfolk was one of six people to die in the fire. Dominique Cruz-Champion and Josh Molyneaux, a young couple, and their children Ella, Romyn, and Zachariah all perished, New York State Police Captain Lucas Anthony said at a press conference on Thursday.

The children were ages three, two, and 10 months.

The tragedy has sparked a backlash against Broome County’s heavy use of hotels and motels as emergency shelter for homeless families, with local protesters holding a continuous rally at the county office building in Binghamton since 4 pm Tuesday. Fifty-six of the people living in the Knights Inn on Monday were placed there by the county Department of Social Services. The department did not say whether that included any of the victims of the fire.

Local residents say the department has knowingly placed families in unsafe conditions. New York Focus and ProPublica reported last year that the department’s inspections had found a litany of issues at the motel for years, such as broken lighting, windows, and doors, punched-through walls, torn carpeting, and cockroaches.

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At least two fires were reported at the Knights Inn in 2024, and health inspectors found in 2022 that the motel was not in compliance with fire safety requirements, documents reviewed by New York Focus show. The motel did pass an inspection in April of last year, the most recent available.

“What happened yesterday was preventable. It could have been prevented had our city officials did something about it, or even took us seriously,” said Jasmine Stradford, who lived with her family at the Knights Inn in 2024.

The Broome County Department of Social Services placed over 200 households at the Knights Inn from April 2023 to March 2024, the last full year of data available. Many described unlivable conditions, frequent drug use, and repeated visits from law enforcement. Over about six years, law enforcement and emergency services were summoned for 789 incidents.

DSS deferred questions about fire safety issues at the Knights Inn to Broome County Executive Jason Garnar’s office, which did not respond in time for publication.

A previous fire at the motel in January 2024 may have been caused by a space heater in a room that was under construction, WNBF reported at the time. Eight months later, another fire was reported in a room, according to a complaint received by the Town of Union and reviewed by New York Focus.

Broome County announced plans last month to move away from hotels as shelter for unhoused families. But as it searched for an organization to manage the overhaul of its homeless services, it continued to place families in hotels, including the Knights Inn.

One year ago, New York Focus and ProPublica profiled the Knights Inn as part of an investigation, which found that nearly half of all households receiving emergency shelter outside of New York City are placed in hotels. The Broome County Department of Social Services paid the Knights Inn $750,000 for emergency shelter despite the motel getting written up in every inspection for two and a half years.

Some of those citations were fire-related. The Knights Inn received a critical violation in 2022 for not properly operating and maintaining its fire system, according to inspection data from the New York Department of Health. Management was aware and working to fix it as soon as possible, according to the inspection comments, and the motel didn’t receive any violations in its most recent available inspection, dated April 2025.

Firefighters stand next to a motel, which is pouring smoke with small mostly extinguished flames. Large parts of the motel are completely burned through, and buildings and sky are visible behind it.

The Knights Inn fire sparked a backlash against Broome County’s heavy use of hotels and motels as emergency shelter. | Endwell Fire Department

New York Focus and ProPublica spoke with the hotel’s manager Aizaz Siddiqui last year. At the time, Siddiqui said that around half of the rooms were typically occupied by people placed by the Department of Social Services and acknowledged that police were regularly called to the hotel.

New York Focus was able to reach Siddiqui by phone Tuesday to schedule an interview, but could not contact him Wednesday morning.

Broome County’s homeless population has increased dramatically over the last 10 years, leading to the increased reliance on hotels for shelter. Because the local shelters generally only house single adults, the county is almost completely reliant on hotels for emergency housing for families with children.

The county is one of the poorest in the state. The strain on low-income families has increased as the county government has failed to build affordable housing while developers expanded student-only housing to serve local university communities, said Rebecca Rathmell, a Binghamton city councilmember and housing advocate. A housing needs study commissioned by the county and published in 2024 found that nearly half of renter households spent half or more of their income on housing.

John Choynowski, a former deputy commissioner for Broome DSS, suggested the tragedy may be downstream of structural issues such as long-frozen benefits levels, understaffing at the social services department, and the practice of housing families at hotels.

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“Has anyone spent a week in a hotel with their kids on vacation? It is stressful and impossible. Imagine having to live in a hotel, share beds, have a microwave to cook in for months at a time?” he wrote on Facebook. “This leads to increased calls to the hotline of alleged abuse and neglect. It’s not abuse and neglect, it is a family trying to survive in poverty. These families are set up for failure.”

The New York State Police announced that they arrested Tyler Russell, 24, on six counts of second-degree manslaughter and one count of fourth-degree arson. Under New York’s penal code, both offenses are reckless in nature, but don’t necessarily mean the person intended to kill or destroy property.

Russell’s charges could change as police gather more evidence, officials said on Thursday. They said investigators had located a lighter they believed was used to start the fire, but did not share additional details about the circumstances leading up to the blaze.

Russell listed his home address as “The Knight’s Hotel” on paperwork for his arraignment obtained by New York Focus. State prison records indicate he was paroled earlier this year after spending about two years in prison for stealing a vehicle. Nancy Williams, the DSS commissioner, declined Thursday to say whether her agency had placed him at the hotel.

Russell is being held at the Broome County Correctional Facility without bail, according to court documents. He did not respond to a request for comment sent via the jail’s messaging app.

The county sent Crooks and her son to a new hotel, the Red Roof Inn in Binghamton. Most of their belongings were in a storage unit that was destroyed by the fire. They haven’t been allowed back into their room to retrieve clothes or the electric scooter her fiancé uses to get to work. On Tuesday, she took her son to see a counselor.

Davona Parker, Woolfolk’s younger sister, said her sister spent roughly $900 a month for her room, eating up most of her disability check. With the money she had left over, Woolfolk liked to buy food and small gifts for other residents. Last year, the ceiling of her room fell in, and she got pneumonia that Parker attributed to mold at the motel. Even so, Woolfolk felt comfortable there.

“She was happy she made friends with anybody that moved in or out of there,” Parker said. “She didn’t feel any longer alone, so it was kind of like home to her. She got used to it.”