A Florida man is warning people about vacationing at the Dominican Republic after he became severely ill while traveling in the country. His story comes as the number of American deaths in the Carribean nation reaches seven in the last 12 months.
Jerry Martin was recently at the Dominican Republic with his wife to celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary. Several days after arriving at Punta Cana, he started experiencing some excruciating symptoms.
The symptoms not only ruined the rest of his trip, they never went away after returning to the United States. He went to the emergency room after landing back home and has since been back five times in the last few weeks.
“I am scared, honestly. It’s my health,” he told the news broadcaster.
Martin was not able to tell whether his illness is linked with the other cases that have emerged in the media in the past two weeks but his experience has caused him to become more cautious about going to the country and traveling outside the United States.
“Just don’t go,” he said.
Timeline
Here is a timeline with details of the known incidents involving Americans at the Dominican Republic.A doctor in Colorado, where they reside, told them they had likely been poisoned by pesticides that Knull said were used liberally at the resort.
“I was having the worst intestinal cramping I have ever experienced. It felt like a chainsaw going through my gut,” she said.
Sport got a drink from the mini bar in her hotel room before going to bed and never woke up, her family said. Her cause of death was listed as a heart attack.
“He couldn’t sit up, and he was making noises that … you couldn’t make out. He was struggling quite a bit to get out of bed and to talk,” said McCoy. “I tried to communicate with him and all he could do was mumble.”
Her husband was soon pronounced dead. Harrison was cleared by a doctor before the trip. The official cause of death was pulmonary edema and a heart attack.
“I started seeing all these other people that were dying of the same exact causes, which made me start to second guess. I no longer feel like my husband died of natural causes,” McCoy said.
According to the autopsy, Howard had fluid in his lungs and a cracked skull.
“He was healthy. I know they’re lying. I just want closure,” she said.
“They kept my son’s body over there for more than a month. He has bruising on his back like he had been kicked. I just think about it sometimes and I want to cry.”
After arriving in their room, Montes took a sip from a bottle of soda she grabbed out of the mini-fridge.
She was rushed to a hospital, where doctors treated her. She said that spitting out the soda likely saved her life and now thinks someone spiked the drink.
“I didn’t realize this could’ve been done on purpose, I just thought it was an accident someone mixed it up, but now I think it was done on purpose,” she said.
Portia Ravenelle, 52, was identified using fingerprints, National Police Col. Frank Félix Durán Mejia said. The New York woman and Orlando Moore, 40, plunged into the ocean in the early hours of March 27, not long after the pair left for the airport to catch a flight home to New York, officials said.
“He was fine,” Arnold said. “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 afterward.”
A hotel doctor cleared Arnold, then said on April 13 that he should be checked into a hospital. The man died the next day.
The family has not been told what caused Arnold’s death.
“We have so many questions,” she said. “We don’t want this to happen to anyone else.”
“She started shrieking and she dropped to the floor. He attempted to do CPR, he tried to resuscitate her,” he said. Paramedics rushed to the room and injected her with epinephrine, a treatment for allergies, before declaring her dead.
Ortiz was rushed to the hospital and expected to survive.
