A Canadian couple have come forward about a harrowing visit there three years ago following numerous reports of mysterious tourist deaths at the popular Caribbean vacation spot.
“It smelled like paint,” she told the news station.
John was also affected by the noxious smell and air.
“It stung bad,” he said.
“She jumped up and ran outside, coughing and hacking.”
Although the couple moved to a different room, Tina reportedly woke up the next morning feeling miserable: nauseous, sweating, chest pains, struggling to breathe and without enough energy to go for a walk.
The couple attempted to find treatment onsite, but the nearest medical center was closed. By the next day, Tina was convulsing and a doctor at another medical center had to administer a defibrillator.
“She kept passing out while I was trying to hold her,” John recalled to CNN. “I said, ‘You’re not going to die. You’re not going to die.'”
According to the report, after Tina was admitted to another hospital, medical staff there found lesions on her lungs. And after the couple returned home to Canada, a doctor there told them that Tina had been “poisoned,” though they still don’t know from what.
The Hammels told CNN that Tina, 49, continues to suffer from medical issues affecting her heart and lungs that she did not have before her 2016 trip to the Dominican Republic.
The FBI is reportedly working with authorities in the Dominican Republic to arrange for toxicology tests of three of the Americans who died under mysterious circumstances there in the last few months.