In the midst of an investigation into the mysterious deaths of three Americans, one other couple who vacationed on the island says they also became violently ill after being exposed to what they say were insecticides sent through the air conditioning system.
Earlier this year Kaylynn Knull, 29, and her boyfriend Tom Schwander, 33, filed a lawsuit against the owners of Grand Bahia Principe Hotel La Romana, claiming they were the cause of their sickness while on vacation in the Dominican Republic back in June 2018. In an interview with CNN, Knull said the recently reported deaths in the Dominican Republic have upset her. “My blood boiled. It made me want to scream. It made me want to cry,” Knull said. “There’s something going on. What happened to us may be related to what happened to them.”
This past May, Edward Nathaniel Holmes, 63 and Cynthia Day, 49, were found unresponsive in their hotel room at the resort in La Romana. After an autopsy was performed, it was found the two had suffered respiratory failure and pulmonary edema, caused by excess lung fluid. Just five days earlier, the same day the couple checked into their hotel, 41-year-old Miranda Schaup-Werner died in her room with her husband nearby. According to the Attorney General’s Office of the Dominican Republic, a preliminary autopsy on Schaup-Werner showed she suffered from a heart attack, pulmonary edema, and respiratory failure. Dominican authorities are awaiting the results of a toxicology test.
CNN reports Jay McDonald, a spokesman for the Schaup-Werner family said they were working with authorities in the United States to gather more information. “Our goal here is answers. We want to understand what happened,” he said, adding that the couple was in the Dominican Republic to celebrate their ninth wedding anniversary.
Knull says she smelled a strong “chemical smell like someone had painted the walls” when she went to her room after coming back from breakfast. Eventually, hotel staff moved the couple up to a luxury room where they stayed the following night. However, Knull says she began feeling stomach cramping and diarrhea and had blood in her stool. “I had sopped his chest up (with drool),” Knull said. “I was sweating so hard my eyes were tearing. My vision was blurred. … My head was getting dizzy.”
The deaths are still under investigation.
