Suit: Tot choked on condom

Dad had gone out to get coffee and breakfast. Mom was helping their 4-year-old son on the toilet. Their 9-year-old daughter was playing Nintendo.

That was how the morning of Jan. 3 played out for the Wolfe family of Massachusetts inside Room 142 of the Homewood Suites in Mount Laurel, Burlington County. Soon, the Wolfes would pack up and finish their long drive home from Florida.

But, wait: The couple's 22-month-old son was supposed to be on the hotel's pull-out sofa, watching TV. Instead, according to a federal lawsuit filed this week in New Jersey, the toddler was choking on a used condom that had been left in their room before they checked in.

When Amy Wolfe heard her youngest child chewing and choking on the condom, she rushed over to help him and retrieved it from his mouth, but according to the lawsuit, the boy already had "ingested the contents."

The suit contends that Homewood Suites and its subsidiaries, Hilton and Blackstone, put the boy at risk by leaving the "life threatening" item in the room and subjecting the boy to an increased risk of contracting a "sexually transmitted disease, including HIV or AIDS, or some other, potentially life threatening, potentially fatal illness."

"The baby had to go through a lot of testing, and continues to, because of this disgusting, horrific incident that essentially violated the whole family, but mostly the young boy," said the Wolfes' attorney, Norm Hobbie, of Eatontown, Monmouth County. "It's an extremely sensitive time for them."

Homewood Suites did not return phone calls or e-mail seeking comment on the suit yesterday.

The 15-count complaint contends that all five Wolfes suffered severe mental anguish witnessing the incident, and that the boy's siblings likely would have "psychiatric scars" because of it.

It says that Steven Wolfe has been forced to spend "great sums of money" to help cure his wife of a "loss of enjoyment of life."

The suit says the Wolfes had been en route to Pittsfield, Mass., after spending the holidays with relatives in Fort Myers, Fla.