Mystiska turistdödsfall i Dominikanska republiken

Awilda Montes, a 43-year-old woman from Queens, New York, claimed she vomited blood after drinking what she believed was a 7-Up from her hotel room minibar at the Bahía Príncipe on October 25, 2018.
"I was miserable," she told the New York Daily News. "I was vomiting. I had stomach pains. The chemical burns were all over. I still don't have sensation in my tongue."

Montes said she told hotel staff about what happened and they offered her a couples massage and dinner.
She said they also wanted her to sign a non-disclosure agreement. She did not accept the offer.
https://www.businessinsider.com/american-deaths-dominican-republic-edward-holmes-cynthia-day-miranda-schaup-werner-2019-6?r=US&IR=T

"The Bahia Principe resort group's statement to Fox News said that Schaup "had suffered from heart conditions in the past."
"McDonald said that Schaup had been diagnosed with inflammation around the heart 15 years ago, and sought treatment for it, but that she was cleared medically afterward. He said it seemed the hotel and others were trying to mislead the public about what caused Schaup's death."
https://www.foxnews.com/world/pennsylvania-woman-dominican-hotel-maryland-couple

She tells us that she couldn’t get the bottle open. The cap was too tight. When her boyfriend assisted, she didn’t hear any soda fizz. She thought the soda was flat. Still, she raised an eyebrow and sipped cautiously.

“It smelled like bleach,” Montes said. “I spit the soda out. I immediately felt the burn."
Montes tells us that she had chemical burns throughout her mouth. She called the front desk and went to see the doctor on-site.

“If I had mixed the drink with alcohol, I probably would’ve swallowed the liquid before realizing there was a problem," Montes said.
https://www.fox29.com/news/woman-claims-she-became-ill-after-drinking-soda-from-minibar-at-"dominican-resort-where-pa-woman-died

"McDonald said Miranda “decided to relax with a drink from the minibar” and mixed a bottle of alcohol with a soda. But less than an hour later, things took a turn for the worst.
“Suddenly, she called out to Dan and he came right over and she was unable to breathe.
https://people.com/crime/pennsylvania-woman-dies-same-dominican-republic-hotel/

"His sister-in-law, Lisa Maria Caruso, said he suddenly went into respiratory distress after “drinking something.”

“He went to the doctor before he left, and he had no problems,” Frank Caruso said. “I spoke to the doctor. He called me when he found out he died, and he said he did not see anything wrong before he left. He could not believe the news.”

“It is very hard to get a straight story from anyone there,” she said. “They even wanted to cremate the body. We insisted on having the body sent back here.”
https://nypost.com/2019/06/22/long-island-pizzeria-owner-is-latest-american-to-die-in-dominican-republic/

Hammell, 49, and her husband, John, said they went to a resort in the Grand Bahia chain, Grand Bahia Principe Punta Cana, in 2016. "
On the second day of their trip, they retired to their room for a nap. Tina said she woke under the air conditioning unit in their room. "My throat and nose were on fire," she recalled. "It smelled like paint."
"She jumped up and ran outside, coughing and hacking," John said. He was also overwhelmed. "It stung bad."

They called the front desk and a worker showed up to their room, they said, and sprayed what seemed to be a disinfectant. The Hammells demanded another room and there got a decent night's sleep. The next morning, Tina was in bad shape. She was nauseated and covered in sweat, had lost her voice and was increasingly struggling to breathe. The couple tried to take a walk, but she couldn't muster the strength. Chest pains set in.
John and Tina went to the medical office on the property. It was closed, they said. They tried to eat and get some sleep. The following day, Tina was worse. John called for help from their room, demanding that management find a way to take them to another section of the sprawling resort where there was another medical facility.
John broke down as he remembered watching helplessly as his wife's body began convulsing. She buckled into a fetal position and her hands twisted with muscle spasms.
"She kept passing out while I was trying to hold her," he said. "I said, 'You're not going to die. You're not going to die.'"
At the medical center, a doctor managed to revive Tina, John Hammell said, at one point using a defibrillator.
She was transferred to a hospital where she stayed for at least four days and doctors found lesions on her lungs, medical records show. "

"'You've been poisoned,'" John Hammell recalled physicians saying to his wife, "'but we don't know from what.'"

Three years later, the couple says, doctors are treating her for lung and heart problems she said she did not have before her trip to the Dominican Republic, though doctors haven't been able to say for sure what the cause is.
"I had no idea there were other people," she told CNN, weeping."

Jake Spruill of Virginia told CNN that he and his family had a terrible vacation at the Majestic Elegance resort in 2017. He, too, described an overwhelming chemical smell in his room."

When he and his wife opened their room, they were hit by "an incredibly, overpowering smell that I would consider a chemical smell."
His throat and nose felt mildly irritated, he said. They complained to management. "The response was 'We cannot move you. I'm sorry, we can't move you,'" Spruill said.
The couple left to spend time in the resort. When they returned, it smelled like someone had sprayed air freshener to cover the chemical smell. It didn't work.

"His wife started to have gastrointestinal distress. His eyes burned and watered."

Spruill's brother-in-law, Richard Brumfield, said when he went to his room he noticed a smell.
"It was almost like adhesive," he said. "It was extremely noxious."
Brumfield said that when he complained about the chemical smell, the hotel staff put scented candles in his room, which did nothing to help.
Within three days, Brumfield said, he started to feel "deathly ill." He lost his appetite, had horrible stomach cramps and felt exhausted, symptoms that lasted nearly three weeks.