“Preventing a Tragic Incident at My Airbnb on a Beautiful Weekend Is Easier Than You Think”

It was a picture-perfect weekend away – a family trip to upstate New York to introduce a baby girl to her grandmother for the first time.

Shannon Hubbard, an elementary school teacher, along with her husband John and their children Jack and Maggie, decided to go on a trip from Cape Cod to Salt Point, New York. They were accompanied by Shannon’s parents, Tim and Nancy Waldron, and had planned to stay at a renovated farmhouse they had found on Airbnb.

During the trip, the family engaged in various activities such as apple picking, visiting pumpkin patches, exploring local breweries, and commemorating Shannon’s parents’ anniversary with a homemade dinner. It was also a special trip as Maggie, who had recently turned one, got to meet her paternal grandmother for the first time.

Unfortunately, tragedy struck on the last night of their vacation, which was on October 12, 2024. A fire broke out in the living room while Shannon and John were outside in the hot tub, and the children were asleep upstairs.

With no working smoke or carbon monoxide alarms in the rental home, the blaze quickly spread through the property without any alert to the danger. 

Shannon and John raced inside to rescue their children – but only John and Jack made it out alive. 

Nine months later, Shannon’s father, Tim, told the Daily Mail he is still struggling to come to terms with losing his daughter and granddaughter in such an ‘easily preventable’ tragedy.

‘If that home had working smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, then my daughter and granddaughter would still be alive today,’ he said.

‘The beeping would have told them something was wrong. They would’ve heard it. They would’ve gone in. They would’ve gotten the kids and gotten out. They would’ve had time… it’s unconscionable.’

Tim said everything about the family weekend away had been perfect – ‘until it wasn’t.’

He and Nancy left to return home to Massachusetts hours before the deadly blaze broke out. 

It sparked after John put a log into the wood stove, which ignited a fire in the chimney flue.

The couple smelled smoke around 20 minutes later, and John, then 39, ran inside and found the living room filling up fast with thick fumes.

Shannon, 35, bolted upstairs to get the children. Maggie’s room was closest to the source of the fire, and, like the living room, was quickly being consumed by hot smoke.

‘She opened the door to get her baby, and the door slammed shut behind her,’ Tim said. ‘I’m not sure if it was a backdraft caused by the fire, or what happened… but they couldn’t get out.’

John tried desperately to force the door to Maggie’s room open. As he clawed at the handle and attempted to barge the door down, he suffered burns on his hands and face.

Eventually overwhelmed by smoke, he grabbed Jack from his bedroom, raced outside, and called 911, helplessly watching while the flames and smoke slowly engulfed the farmhouse.

Emergency personnel arrived within minutes but struggled to reach Shannon and Maggie because of the intense heat.

By the time firefighters got to them, it was too late. Within hours, they were both pronounced dead in the hospital.

John and Jack, then 3, were both injured but survived.

The family would later learn that the rental home had no functioning smoke or carbon monoxide detectors – despite the Airbnb listing for the property allegedly claiming that it did.

‘They’d spent thousands renovating this home,’ said Tim. ‘They had three different fire extinguishers in the house, fire blankets – all these things to protect the property.

‘But the only thing that would’ve actually protected lives in this case – a really simple thing – was overlooked.’

Five months later, the owners of the Airbnb property, Dennis Darcy, 57, and Meredith Darcy, 55, were each charged with two counts of manslaughter in the second degree.

Their arrests came after the New York State Police conducted an investigation and found the home was not properly equipped with functioning smoke detectors, and was also in violation of the state’s fire and building safety codes.

Like Tim, Dutchess County District Attorney Anthony Parisi said while announcing the Darcys’ charges that the deaths of Shannon and Maggie could’ve easily been prevented.

‘[Their deaths] in this senseless fire serve as a tragic reminder of the critical role smoke detectors play in safeguarding lives,’ he said.

The Darcys pleaded not guilty and the case remains ongoing. The couple is currently out on bond.

Tim said nothing in his life has been the same since losing Shannon and Maggie.

But he is channeling his grief into activism to ensure that no other family has to endure the same unimaginable heartbreak he and his loved ones have been forced to contend with over the last nine months and counting.

Tim is lobbying for legislation to be passed in his home state of Massachusetts that would require owners to prove the presence of working smoke alarms before listing their properties as short-term rentals on sites like Airbnb and VRBO.

Currently, the platforms rely on a self-reporting model and don’t typically verify safety features like detectors.

The bill is named the Maggie Hubbard Rental Safety Act in tribute to his late granddaughter.

‘It would’ve cost the homeowners less than $1,000 to have these detectors properly installed,’ said Tim.

‘But they didn’t, and this kind of oversight is just unconscionable… How can you be so concerned with your personal property and then just be so inattentive to something that can actually save a life?’

Tim is determined to see something good come out of his daughter and granddaughter’s deaths.

The Maggie Hubbard Rental Safety Act is currently moving through the Massachusetts State House. It has bipartisan sponsorship in both chambers and recently passed its first committee hearing, where Tim and his family testified.

The response was positive, Tim said, and while acknowledging there may be hurdles ahead, he’s been encouraged by the momentum gathered so far and the grassroots support the legislation has garnered.

One day, he hopes to see the legislation adopted nationwide.

‘There will be some satisfaction, some sense of relief that we were able to do something and help my granddaughter’s name and legacy endure if this one gets over the finish line,’ said Tim.

‘If some positive changes come out of this that protect other families, that will help me with my grieving process.

‘This work is one of the ways that I’m able to deal with the sorrow I feel every day.’

Tim recalled what happened when he learned of the fire.

He first got a call from John around 11:30 p.m. that night, but he could hear only garbled noises and voices before the line went dead.

Attempts to call John back were unsuccessful, and Tim recalled feeling a foreboding sense of worry slowly grow.

When his phone finally rang again, it was John’s number – but the voice on the other end was unfamiliar. A nurse from a hospital in Poughkeepsie told him there had been a fire, and that he and Nancy needed to come back immediately.

‘We got back in the car and headed back. And along the way, we got some more calls, just kind of confirming that my granddaughter and daughter weren’t going to survive,’ recounted Tim.

‘So it was a tough ride.’

Tim says he’s still learning how to cope with his grief.

Shannon and Maggie are the first thing he thinks of when he wakes up, and the last thing on his mind before he goes to sleep.

‘I can still feel happiness on any given day, but underneath all that, losing Shannon and Maggie is never far from my thoughts,’ said Tim.

‘There are good moments and bad moments – good days and bad days. We’re learning to live with that while we learn to live without Shannon and Maggie.

‘I don’t know if it’ll get easier, but we’re taking it day by day.’

Shannon Hubbard was a preschool teacher at Chatham Elementary School in Cape Cod and loved her job, Tim said.

She was also a loving, doting mother who was just entering the ‘best stage of her life’ when she was killed, he said.

‘And Maggie had her whole life ahead of her. She was such a happy little girl who radiated such personality right from the start.

‘They lived down the road from us, and I just so enjoyed being near them and watching them grow as a family.

‘We were all going to grow up together, and that’s what was taken away from us.’

Airbnb has not returned the Daily Mail’s request for comment.