Bride attacked on the eve of her wedding reaches settlement with Beaufort hotel

A Beaufort hotel reached an undisclosed settlement last week with a woman who was reportedly attacked while a guest there the night before her wedding, court documents show.

Police reported that 26-year-old Gretchen Rhyan Mazur-Williamson, of Beaufort, was badly beaten in a rented cottage at the Beaufort Inn in April 2009. Investigators believed the assailant entered her room through a broken rear window and waited for her to return, according to reports in the Beaufort Gazette and Island Packet at the time.

Upon returning to the cottage from a Bay Street restaurant that night, Mazur-Williamson told police the man jumped on her, covered her mouth and punched her repeatedly, causing multiple fractures to her nose and face.

The bride was forced to cancel her wedding plans and undergo facial surgery as a result of her injuries, police told the newspapers in 2009.

Attorneys for Williamson filed a lawsuit against the hotel in March 2012, accusing its owner, Associated Luxury Inns of Beaufort, of gross negligence for “failing to adopt and utilize adequate and proper security and emergency procedures for guests,” court records show.

A settlement was reached June 1, though the total amount will remain confidential, according to attorneys connected with the case.

The lawsuit alleged there had been 250 robberies, assaults and other crimes near the hotel during an unspecified period before the attack, court documents show.

Given those crimes, a “likelihood of eventual criminal conduct against a guest of the Beaufort Inn was foreseeable ... and (the hotel) owed a duty to take reasonable action to protect (Williamson) and other guests against the risk of harm,” the suit alleged.

The lawsuit also alleged that the hotel’s staff cleaned up blood and disturbed or removed other evidence that might have led to the attacker’s arrest sooner.

It was not until years after the attack that police finally made an arrest. Said Perez, of Beaufort, was connected to the incident through DNA in September 2015 after he was charged in an unconnected case of beating and attempting to sexually assault a young woman, the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office reported in 2015.

Perez was swabbed for DNA at the Beaufort County Detention Center then and the sample entered into the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System was flagged as a match in the 2009 attack, the sheriff’s office reported.

Perez now faces pending charges of assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature and first-degree burglary in connection with the 2009 attack.

Williamson sought damages in the civil lawsuit for the cost to cancel the wedding ceremony, honeymoon and other events, among other costs, court documents state.

Williamson and her husband, Michael Williamson, were scheduled to be married the next day at Sea Island Presbyterian Church on Lady’s Island, with a reception to follow at The Oaks Plantation.

The couple canceled both events and instead were married in the backyard of the St. Helena Island home of the bride’s parents after she was released from Beaufort Memorial Hospital.

“This whole experience is very difficult for both of us,” Mazur-Williamson wrote in an email to the Gazette and Packet after the attack. “I would rather be broke from the wedding and sitting in Mexico in our Royal Suite than dealing with this tragic ordeal.”

Attorneys for Mazur-Williamson as well as representatives for the Beaufort Inn all declined to comment on last week’s confidential settlement.

This story was originally published June 5, 2017 at 4:36 PM with the headline "Bride attacked on the eve of her wedding reaches settlement with Beaufort hotel."