It’s the story you haven’t heard about the “discrimination” controversy at South Dakota’s Grand Gateway Hotel. Complete with a messy Amber Heard-style backstory.
In court documents filed as part of a multimillion dollar civil RICO lawsuit against NDN Collective for an alleged racist smear to destroy their business, owners of the Grand Gateway Hotel say two employees of NDN Collective are alleged to have defecated in a hotel bed after being kicked out for breaking guest rules at the establishment.
In Grand Gateway’s six-count complaint against NDN Collective, family business owners say Sunny Red Bear and Hermus Bettelyoun rented a room for a multiple nights in April 2021. The couple was kicked out of the hotel for violating hotel rules prohibiting leaving young children unattended in the swimming pool. After Red Bear and Bettelyoun left the premises, Grand Gateway housekeeping staff discovered deposits of adult human feces on a hotel bed and bedding in the couple’s room.
After a native-on-native shooting death at the hotel in March 2022, Sunny Red Bear and Hermus Bettelyoun were two of several NDN Collective operatives and agents who filed a discrimination lawsuit against the hotel, claiming they were denied service on basis of their ethnicity.
Hotel owners say the NDN contingent were recognized and denied service because of previous bad behavior at the establishment and ongoing hostility surrounding the shooting incident and aftermath, including alleged threats by NDN Collective staff and leadership to vandalize hotel property, including eyewitness accounts of threats by NDN staff to burn down Retsel Corporation hotels.
Retsel Corporation and civil rights attorney John Pierce filed the civil RICO lawsuit against NDN Collective in September, alleging racketeering activities, injurious falsehoods, interference with business practices, wire fraud and forgery, including a doctored email circulated online in an effort to claim Grand Gateway Hotel had a policy of not renting rooms to natives.
Court documents also show that Retsel Corporation has employed dozens of Native Americans and had several Native American families lodging at the hotel at the time the NDN Collective operatives were denied lodging during a “discrimination test” that the group streamed to social media.
In 2017, Architectural Digest magazine named Grand Gateway Hotel the most beautiful hotel property in the state of South Dakota.
KEEP SOUTH DAKOTA FREE.
