Woman Vomited Blood at Dominican Resort, Alleges Her 7UP Was Filled With Bleach: Reports

A man is seen on a beach in the Dominican Republic in a file photo. Erika Santelices/AFP/Getty Images

A Brooklyn woman said that she vomited blood at a resort in the Dominican Republic after drinking a 7UP soda that was allegedly filled with bleach, according to local reports.

Awilda Montes said she was on vacation at the Luxury Bahia Principe Bouganville Resort last October when it happened.

“You finally get those days off you look forward to and something like this will happen?” said Montes, CBS New York reported. “You just don’t expect this.”

Elaborating, she said that she got a 7UP bottle from the minibar in her hotel room and allegedly found bleach instead of soda.

“I was cautious when I took a gulp of it,” said Montes. “I immediately felt it burn me, burn my mouth, burn my tongue.”

“My mouth was on fire,” she added. “When I spit it out in bathroom sink it was blood. I was just irrigating my mouth.”

Doctors treated her for pain and vomiting, she told CBS. “I was miserable,” she told the NewYork Daily News. “I was vomiting. I had stomach pains. The chemical burns were all over.

“I still don’t have sensation in my tongue.

“The next day I was nauseous,” she claimed. “I was in pain, and all I could have was ice.”

The resort apologized, Montes said, and it offered dinner reservations and a massage as compensation.

“At the time I didn’t think it was done deliberately,” Montes told the CBS affiliate about what had happened to her last year. “Until I saw the news and realized there has to be some kind of correlation with what happened to me and what happened to them. “

“I believe these people were poisoned,” she added. “I would’ve been poisoned had I not held it in my mouth and spit it (out) because it took effect really fast.”

The Bahia Principe Hotels and Resorts suggested that it would take legal action over the alleged “dissemination of false information” following reports of the deaths.

“Serious insults and threats have been levied against some of our more than 15,000 employees and their families, who are the backbone of our company and before whom we cannot stand idle on the sideline,” the statement said, according to the Daily News.

Deaths Reported

Her claims come amid reports of American tourists dying at several Dominican Republic resorts.

The troubling pattern of deaths made headlines after Maryland couple Edward Holmes, 63, and Cynthia Day, 49, was found dead at the Bahia Principe La Romana on May 30. They had checked in on the same day that 41-year-old Pennsylvania woman Miranda Schaup-Werner collapsed and died after drinking from the minibar at the same resort chain on May 25, the New York Post reported.

On June 9, the family of a California man Robert Wallace said he died earlier this year after drinking from the minibar at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino resort in Punta Cana. They described the 67-year-old in relatively good health.

“He was fine,” niece Chloe Arnold said of her uncle, Fox News reported. “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.”

Later, the family of American David Harrison, who also died of a pulmonary edema and respiratory failure, spoke out about his death. He died last July.

“I no longer feel like my husband died of natural causes,” said his widow, Dawn McCoy, according to the Post.

And another Pennsylvania family said that their loved one, Yvette Monique Sport, died in June 2018, at the Bahia Principe resort in Punta Cana, Fox29 reported. Her cause of death was due to a “heart attack,” said her sister, Felecia Nieves.

“She was 51 years of age, relatively healthy, no reason for her to go on vacation and die so suddenly,” Nieves told the station.

Nieves questioned whether the “heart attack” cause of death was true. “We were promised within three months that we would receive a toxicology report. To this day, which is almost a year now we’ve got nothing,” Nieves said to Fox 5.

Following Wallace’s death, it was reported that the FBI would now investigate the deaths.