Dominican Republic deaths: How many people have died, what’s the latest and is it safe to travel there?
THE sudden and unexpected deaths of tourists staying at resorts in the Dominican Republic has led to speculation over their mysterious deaths.
A total of 16 tourists have died after falling ill on the Caribbean island in just over a year, in a scenario many have questioned as not coincidental.
What has happened in the Dominican Republic?
The unexpected deaths has led top US cops to investigate amid fears the tourists may have been poisoned.
Where is the Dominican Republic?
The Dominican Republic is a small Caribbean island popular with US tourists.
A total of 30 million tourists have visited the island in the past five years and 2.7 million US tourists visit the popular holiday destination every year.
How many people have died so far?
At least 16 tourists have been confirmed to have died over the past two years.
Lynne Crouch, 54, 2019
Lynne was holidaying with her husband to celebrate her 54th birthday.
Doctors told her partner Peter meningitis caused her death, but a second post-mortem in the UK revealed no trace of the illness.
Mortuary staff also discovered Lynne's heart, eyes, stomach and six other organs were missing from her body.
Peter, 54, then endured five agonising months trying to recover Lynne's organs before being told they'd been found in the Dominican Republic.
Khalid Adkins: June 25, 2019
Khalid Adkins, 46, had been holidaying with his daughters but died from kidney failure after being removed from his flight home in agony.
Khalid was hospitalised in the Dominican Republic's capital, Santo Domingo, after falling ill as he boarded his flight home to Denver.
He was reportedly removed from the plane "screaming in agony".
Speaking to KDVR, Khalid's sister in law said "they transferred him to Santo Domingo and [said] that his breathing is really bad and that his kidneys were failing."
This comes after Khalid had been complaining of a swollen leg and had reportedly experienced vomiting and diarrhoea.
The following evening, it was posted on a GoFundMe page organised to help with the Adkin's family's costs that Khalid had died.
Joseph Allen: June 13, 2019
Joseph Allen, 55, from New Jersey, was found dead in his room at the Terra Linda hotel in Sosua on June 13, the US State Department said.
His sister, Jamie Reed, told ABC that he had made a trip to celebrate a friend’s birthday.
She said that her brother told pals he was feeling hot in the swimming pool and went to take a shower.
Later that evening he still wasn’t feeling well and did not show for breakfast the next day.
Staff then went to his room to perform a wellness check after he failed to answer his door and found him dead on the floor of his suite.
The New Jersey native was said to be in good health and holidayed in the Dominican Republic multiple times a year.
A preliminary autopsy suggested he suffered a cardiac arrest and there were no signs of violence, CNN reported.
But his brother Jason said he can’t understand how Joseph could have died so suddenly given that a recent medical examination found no health problems.
His sister said: “The families need answers. We deserve answers. My brother was my best friend. I spoke to him every day. This is killing me.
“I just don't want them to suppress anything, especially with them embalming the body.”
Allen’s relatives released a statement saying they believe he could be “the victim of a wrongful death.”
Leyla Cox: June 10, 2019
Leyla Cox, 53, from Staten Island, New York, flew to the paradise Caribbean island on June 5 to celebrate her birthday where she was meant to spent a week before coming back to New York.
William Cox, her son, said she was found dead in her hotel room on Monday, just one day after her birthday.
Mr Cox said he was suspicious after his mum’s death was ruled a heart attack.
He told the Staten Island Advance: “I am overwhelmed and confused and in shock. I have a right to be suspicious.”
Mr Cox said he begged his mum not to go on holiday to the island after a spate of deaths in the country.
He said: “My family wanted her to not go on this vacation.
“I truly believe if my mother was not in the Dominican Republic, she would have been alive right now.”
“With everything going on in the news right now, we think she’s a casualty of what’s been happening.”
Edward Holmes & Cynthia Day: May 30, 2019
Engaged couple from Maryland, Edward Holmes, 63, and Cynthia Day, 49, were also found dead in their room at the Grand Bahia Principe resort.
Miranda Schaup-Werner: May 25, 2019
Miranda Schaup-Werner, 41, from Pennsylvania,
collapsed in her room after having a drink from her minibar at the Luxury Bahia Principe Bouganville in La Romana, 70 miles west of Punta Cana.
She died on May 25.
Robert Bell Wallace: April 14, 2019
Robert Bell Wallace, 67, died from unknown causes during an April trip to the island.
His family said he became unwell after drinking a glass of scotch from his room's the minibar at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Punta Cana.
He was visiting the country for his step-son's wedding.
His heartbroken niece, Chloe Arnold, told Fox News: “He was fine.
“He and his wife arrived there at around midnight on April 10. On April 11 he had scotch from the minibar.
“He started feeling very sick, he had blood in his urine and stool right afterwards.”
She said a hotel doctor had checked Mr Wallace, then decided on April 13 he needed to be hospitalised. He died on April 14.
Dominican authorities have yet to give the family a cause of death, Ms Arnold said.
“We have so many questions,” she said. “We don’t want this to happen to anyone else.”
John Corcoran: April 2019
The brother of TV star Barbara Corcoran was found dead in a Dominican Republic hotel room.
Property mogul Barbara, 70, who appears on America's version of Dragons Den, revealed her 60-year-old brother John died from a sudden heart attack while on holiday with a pal in April.
Speaking with TMZ on Tuesday, Shark Tank star Barbara said her brother’s friend discovered his lifeless body on the floor of their suite.
But a post-mortem examination has never revealed his cause of death.
It is unclear which hotel John was staying in at the time.
Miranda Schaup-Werner, 41, collapsed and died in her room after having a drink from her minibar at the Luxury Bahia Principe Bouganville in La Romana, 70 miles west of Punta Cana
Five days later, Edward Holmes, 63, and Cynthia Day, 49, were found dead in their room at the neighbouring Grand Bahia Principe resort.
And it has since emerged Yvette Monique Short, 51, passed away she had a drink from the minibar.
Tracy Jerome Jester Jr: March 17, 2019
The 31-year-old man died while on holiday in the Dominican Republic, having thrown up blood after saying a soft drink “didn’t taste right”.
Tracy Jerome Jester Jr, from Georgia, US, died while on holiday to the Caribbean island but died on March 17 this year, a day after going sightseeing.
He started having breathing difficulties while on holiday with his sister, who phoned for an ambulance.
His mum, Melody Moore, told ABC News her daughter said: “He just dropped to his knees and started throwing up blood, and was calling for Mama.”
Moore said she had spoken to her son at around 7.40pm on the night before he died and he had told her he had been out sightseeing during the day and planned to leave at 10am the next morning to fly home.
He also told her he had drunk a fizzy drink but it didn't taste right.
A short time later her daughter called her to say Jester was being sick and saying he couldn’t breathe.
She told her daughter to call for an ambulance.
Moore said she panicked because she couldn’t get to her children.
She added that by 4.40am her son “was gone”.
Jester’s death was only recently confirmed by the US State Department.
In an update on his passing, the Dominican Republic's tourism minister, Francisco Javier Garcia, said on July 17 that he had died from natural causes, and his death was "isolated in occurrence".
A National Institute of Pathology report indicated that Jester's cause of death was "basal bilateral pneumonia" which created a build-up of water between his lungs and chest, making breathing difficult, reports the New York Post.
But Jester's mum said she intended looking into her son's death, telling WSB-TV: "Something is wrong, my son is gone. Something is really wrong."
David Harrison: July 2018
David Harrison, 45, from Maryland, US, died in July 2018 on a family holiday at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Punta Cana.
Before going to bed, Harrison reportedly fell ill and died the next day from pulmonary edema and heart attack.
His devastated widow Dawn McCoy said her husband was mumbling inanely and complained of a "very potent, strange smell".
She also claimed officials repeatedly pressured her to cremate her husband as she was trying to figure out how to get his body back to the US.
She told People Magazine: "They kept trying to get me to cremate my husband. They kept telling me that it would be considerably cheaper to cremate him.”
Yvette Monique Sport: June 2018
Yvette Monique Sport, 51, passed away she had a drink from the minibar in June last year.
Chris Palmer: April 18, 2018
Army veteran Chris Palmer, 41, died on April 18, 2018.
Mr Palmer’s family were told he had pulmonary edema and that the official cause of death was a heart attack.
But Bernadette Hiller, a friend who had dated Palmer for about 10 years and saw him the week before he died the Villa Cocotal resort, said she doubts that explanation.
“As soon as he died, I wondered if he was poisoned, if he was drugged. He was healthy as a horse,” she told Fox News.
At some point, he told friends he was feeling ill and had a bad headache, said Ms Hiller.
He was later found dead in his room and the Dominican authorities said he choked on his own vomit.
Barbara Diane Maser-Mitchell: September 17, 2016
Retired nurse Diane Maser-Mitchell died on September 17, 2016.
Her family was told that she too suffered a heart attack.
Ms Maser-Mitchell was staying at the Excellence resort in Punta Cana where she was celebrating her birthday with her son and his longtime companion.
After having cocktails on her second day at the resort she said she felt ill and went to her room, which was adjacent to her son's room, according to her son's companion, Terry Mackey.
He said that moderate drinker Ms Maser-Mitchell continued to feel ill and did not accompany them for breakfast.
She grew progressively worse and her family summoned the resort doctor, who asked her if she wanted to go to a hospital, according to Mackey.
Maser-Mitchell at first declined then said she would go but went into a state of cardiac arrest in the ambulance.
"I was sitting in the ambulance with her, holding her hand the whole time," said Mr Mackey.
He said that as a nurse she would have known the symptoms of a heart attack but didn’t say that’s what was happening two her.
What has the Dominican Republic said?
Dominican authorities have said post-mortem examinations revealed the tourists died of natural causes.
The country's health ministry has blasted reports of the deaths branding them "fake news" aimed at harming its tourism industry.
Ministry of Public Health spokesman Carlos Suero insisted that the Caribbean country shouldn’t be blamed for the series of tourist deaths.
“It’s all a hysteria against the Dominican Republic, to hurt our tourism, this is a very competitive industry and we get millions of tourists, we are a popular destination,” he told Fox News.
“The testing results are all negative, everything – the food, the alcohol, the air – is normal, there is no alteration of the alcohol."
Representatives for two of the resorts where the victims died, Hard Rock Hotel & Casino and Bahia Principe, say the deaths are accidents.
Is it safe to travel?
César Duvernay, a spokesperson for the Dominican Republic's foreign ministry, told CBS News that the cases are isolated out of more than 6 million tourists, and that this doesn't mean the country is unsafe.
Delta Airlines also announced it would allow passengers with tickets to Punta Cana to cancel or reschedule their flights “due to recent events.”
Hard Rock Hotel & Casino decided to remove liquor dispensers from all guest rooms at the Punta Cana location.
The island is the fourth most popular travel destination for Americans, with more than 2.7 million US tourists visiting the island in 2017.
According to the US State Department, 13 US citizens died while travelling to the Dominican Republic last year and 17 in 2017, TIME reported.
A State Department spokesperson told the publication that there has not been an increase in the reported deaths of American tourist in the Dominican Republic.
“We have not seen an uptick in the number of US citizen deaths reported to the Department,” the statement said.
Timeline of deaths
- September 2016: Barbara Diane Maser-Mitchell, 69, from Pennsylvania dies after drinking cocktails at the Punta Cana resort
- April 2018: Army veteran Chris Palmer, 41, from Kansas, found dead at the Villa Cocotal Palma resort in Punta Cana
- June 2018: Yvette Monique Sport, 51, of Glenside, Pennsylvania, dies after drinking from the minibar at at a Bahia Principe hotel in Punta Cana
- July 2018: David Harrison dies while on holiday at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Punta Cana
- April 2019: John Corcoran, brother of US TV star Barbara, dies from heart attack
- April 14: Robert Bell Wallace, 67, of California dies in hospital four days after falling ill
- May 25: Miranda Schaup-Werner, 41, of Pennsylvannia, dies within hours of consuming a drink from a resort minibar at Bahia Principe Hotel in La Romana
- May 30: Cynthia Day, 49, and Nathaniel Holmes, 63, of Maryland, are found dead in their hotel rooms
- June 10: Leyla Cox, 53, of Staten Island, New York, is found dead in her hotel room
- June 13: Joseph Allen, 55, from New Jersey, dies in room at the Terra Linda hotel in Sosua
- June 24: Khalid Adkins, 46, was hospitalised in Santo Domingo, after falling ill as he boarded his flight home to Denver
