Last month a couple from Maryland, US, were found dead in their hotel room in the Dominican Republic and their deaths have been shrouded in secrecy ever since.
Autopsies revealed Nathaniel Holmes, 63, and Cynthia Ann Day, 49 died of respiratory failure and pulmonary edema in their bedroom at the Playa Nueva Romana resort, according to WBAL, but a Dominican Republic official has his own theory on what caused their deaths.
Ministry of public health spokesman Carlos Suero claimed Cynthia Ann Day likely died ‘probably from the shock of seeing the person beside her dead,’ insisting the Dominican Republic must not be blamed for their deaths.
Suero said:
There were many bottles of prescription medication in their room. They practically carried around a pharmacy with them. They had pills for blood pressure, for the heart, they had anti-depressants. When you get on an airplane and travel with all that medical [baggage], this can happen.
Nine other American tourists have died in the holiday resort in the last year, and Suero told Fox News the autopsy resorts proved they all died of natural causes and credited the reports of unnatural deaths in the Caribbean country as ‘fake news’ attempting to undermine the tourist industry.
He said:
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. People are taking aim at us.
Last year, 3.2 million Americans travelled to the Dominican Republic for a holiday, which is said to have amounted to half of the country’s $1 billion tourism market, so it’s no wonder they don’t want US natives to stop vacationing there.
Suero’s comments come after Dominican Public Health Minister Rafael Sanchez Cardenas claimed Leyla Cox, a 53-year-old New York woman who died in her room on June 10, had a history of ‘several heart attacks.’ However, her family have disputed this claim, insisting she was healthy and had never experienced a heart attack before.
He said:
People die all over the world. Unfortunately, very unfortunately for us, these tourists have died here. We had about 14 deaths last year here of U.S. tourists, and no one said a word. Now everyone is making a big deal of these.
I went to the United States and got an infection in my throat, but luckily I was returning to the Dominican Republic soon after. If I’d died, would I have been right to blame the United States? No.
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Emma Rosemurgey is an NCTJ trained Journalist who started her career by producing The Royal Rosemurgey newspaper in 2004, which kept her family up to date with the goings on of her sleepy north east village. She graduated from the University of Central Lancashire in Preston and started her career in regional newspapers before joining Tyla (formerly Pretty 52) in 2017, and progressing onto UNILAD in 2019.