Crews gut landmark Chapel Hill hotel. Report says sprinklers were turned off.

The sprinkler system at The Siena Hotel was not working when a longtime employee set fire to the building in August and then shot himself, a Chapel Hill Fire Department report says.

Hotel owner Aanika Hotels LLC applied for demolition permits Nov. 5 for a $1 million project to clean up the damage to the landmark hotel, located at 1505 E. Franklin St., about two miles east of downtown Chapel Hill.

The renovation will be extensive, said Prateek Chandak, co-owner of Aanika Hotels LLC. The hotel’s ownership and management “is not available to comment [further] at this time,” Chandak said.

Hotel General Manager Anthony Carey, the company’s director of regional operations, did not return calls or an email seeking comment.

Multiple fire departments responded to the fire around 4:30 a.m. Aug. 22. About 50 people had to evacuate the building, including one person who was rescued from a balcony.

Hotel guests told ABC11, The News & Observer’s newsgathering partner, that they saw a man carrying a hammer and a butcher’s knife on the stairwell. Another guest reported seeing a “big ball of fire” come out of the elevator.

Town officials have said Chapel Hill resident Randall Moore Bullock, a 60-year-old night clerk at the hotel, set the fire before dying from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

No one else was injured, but the fire caused an estimated $500,000 in damages to the first floor of the 60,000-square-foot hotel and another $100,000 in damages to its contents, the fire department’s report said.

It did not include an estimate for three upper floors, which sustained water and smoke damage.

Police have not determined a motive for the fire and aren’t sharing other details at this time, town spokesman Alex Carrasquillo said Monday. Bullock’s body was sent to the state Medical Examiner’s Office to determine the cause of death.

The fire department’s report includes roughly three pages of information about what the investigation found, but the information was blacked out in a copy provided to The News & Observer.

Carrasquillo said the information was redacted because it is part of a criminal investigation.

Questions about sprinklers, motive

The fire department’s investigation found multiple items on the first floor were set on fire, the report said. Carrasquillo said Monday that charcoal lighter fluid and some type of lighter were used to start the fires.

The fire destroyed 25% to 50% of the first floor, which includes the lobby, a banquet room and the popular Il Palio restaurant, the report says. The hotel’s fire detectors were working, but someone had deactivated the sprinkler system, it says.

The report does not say how long the sprinkler system had been turned off.

Chandak did not respond to a text asking whether Bullock had access to the sprinkler system or how long it might have been turned off before the fire.

Firefighters found smoke and flames coming from the hotel when they arrived, it said. They spent the next few hours ventilating the building and suppressing the fire with water.

Police found Bullock’s body in the hotel around noon Aug. 22.

Friends told The N&O that Bullock had worked as a third-shift night clerk for many years and was a well-known figure in Chapel Hill’s music scene, including as music director of UNC-Chapel Hill’s radio station WXYC and founder of a short-lived indie-rock label, Jesus Christ, in the 1990s.

The hotel has been closed since the fire.

Belfor Property Restoration is now gutting the first floor to the studs, the town’s permit application shows. The marble floors will be cleaned, and carpets, wood floors, ceilings, wallpaper and some furniture is being removed from the upper three floors, where guest rooms and amenities are located. Odor sealer will be applied throughout the building.

The hotel’s heating and ventilation system is also being demolished, the permit shows.

This story was originally published November 18, 2025 at 5:30 AM.