Denied Help At The Front Desk, A Guest Was Killed On The Motel Grounds

Yaimi Guevara Machado, 30, arrived at the Chesapeake Motel on West Okeechobee Road in Hialeah, Florida, late on April 9, 2016, with her companion, Jorge Napoles, who paid for room 106. The two had spent the day drinking, and an argument started as Napoles got ready to leave. It spilled outside the room, and the key stayed inside, locking them both out. Napoles asked the front desk to open room 106, motel security went to the door and found no one there, and Napoles left for the night. He never came back.

Around 4:30 a.m. on April 10, an intoxicated Ronald Lopez Andrade turned up in the motel lobby and asked the receptionist whether any women were available. Andrade lived in an apartment behind the motel and was not a registered guest. Housekeeping warned motel security about him after he harassed a housekeeper in room 104, and security left him on the property anyway. The family's lawsuit also alleged that staff sold him alcohol and tried to help him find a sex worker.

At about 4:50 a.m., Machado came to the front desk and asked to be let back into room 106. She was wearing only a bra and jeans. The receptionist refused because she was not the registered guest, and refused again when Andrade asked for a key to the same room. Surveillance video later shown at trial captured the motel's security guard pushing a housekeeping cart and mopping floors in flip flops. Machado and Andrade were seen walking the property together, heading toward the area where Andrade lived, and that was the last time she was seen alive. Officers found her body early that Sunday morning in a grassy area at the southwest corner of the motel property, with visible trauma to her face and body. Andrade admitted killing her, and a Miami-Dade jury convicted him of first-degree murder in October 2024.

Machado's parents, Julia Machado and Rafael Guevara, sued the motel's owner, The Waves of Hialeah, Inc., for negligent security and wrongful death. Christopher Marlowe of The Haggard Law Firm, P.A. tried the case for the family over five days before Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Reemberto Diaz. Before the case reached the jury, the trial court directed a verdict removing Napoles from the verdict form, finding he had no actual or constructive control over the premises, over the instrumentality, or over Andrade. On December 1, 2017, the jury returned a $12 million verdict against The Waves of Hialeah and assigned no fault to Machado.

The Waves of Hialeah appealed, arguing that the jury should have heard that trace amounts of cocaine and a benzodiazepine were in Machado's system and that Napoles should have stayed on the verdict form. Florida's Third District Court of Appeal rejected both arguments, holding that the drug evidence was properly excluded because its prejudicial effect outweighed its probative value, and that Napoles lacked the control needed to share the blame for Andrade's crime. The court affirmed the $12 million verdict on February 19, 2020. The opinion names The Haggard Law Firm, P.A. and James C. Blecke as counsel for the family on appeal. The verdict stands as the jury returned it.