{"id":25561,"date":"2019-06-17T16:40:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-17T22:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/news\/local-couple-fell-ill-at-dominican-hotel-where-3-tourists-died\/"},"modified":"2019-06-18T07:40:55","modified_gmt":"2019-06-18T13:40:55","slug":"local-couple-fell-ill-at-dominican-hotel-where-3-tourists-died","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/local-news\/local-couple-fell-ill-at-dominican-hotel-where-3-tourists-died\/","title":{"rendered":"Local couple fell ill at Dominican hotel where 3 tourists died"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Kaylynn Knull and Tom Schwander in the Dominican Republic before falling ill last year.<\/strong>
Courtesy Tom Schwander<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

A string of American tourist deaths at a hotel in the Dominican Republic has flung a Colorado couple into the center of attention a year after the two became ill while staying at the hotel.<\/p>\n

Kaylynn Knull of Monument and her boyfriend Tom Schwander of Dillon were vacationing at the Bahia Principe Hotel La Romana in the Dominican Republic last June when the couple became severely ill. They believe the illness came on as a result of exposure to harmful chemicals being sprayed on plants around the resort, though the hotel refuses to cooperate in identifying the substance, according to Schwander.<\/p>\n

The couple is in the process of suing the hotel to determine what chemicals they might have been exposed to during their trip, and as more Americans continue to get sick and die at the hotel, Schwander and Knull\u2019s story has found new life.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been doing this for a year,\u201d Schwander said about their efforts to hold the hotel accountable. \u201cIt sucks people had to die for people to care.\u201d<\/p>\n

Miranda Schaup-Werner, of Pennsylvania, fell ill and died shortly after checking into the hotel May 25. Five days later, Maryland couple Edward Nathaniel Holmes and Cynthia Ann Day were found dead at the hotel, appearing to have suffered from respiratory failure and fluid in the lungs, according to an Associated Press report<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Dominican authorities say the deaths were unrelated<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was unnerving \u2014 the amount of people that stay at that resort, the amount of people that were probably exposed and the fact that all these people have died,\u201d Schwander said. \u201cThirty or 40 people have told us they\u2019ve had similar experiences. How many people didn\u2019t come forward? How many people have died not knowing about it? \u2026 That\u2019s really hard to swallow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schwander and Knull\u2019s issues began about a week after they arrived, when their trip suddenly went from island adventure to dealing with violent illness. Schwander said they woke up one morning to a strange smell in their room and severe headaches. After going to breakfast, the smell still lingered in their room.<\/p>\n

Schwander said they called the front desk to no avail, and the hotel only took action after a maid came in hours later and also smelled the strange odor, noting that it smelled like the \u201cstuff they spray on the flowers.\u201d Schwander said the hotel allowed him to smell the substance that they were spraying on the flowers, and he said it was the same smell in his room, possibly circulating through a gap in the door or the air conditioning unit.<\/p>\n

He noted that the grounds supervisor at the hotel also recognized the smell in their room as the same substance being sprayed on the flowers. Schwander said they were given a portable fan and told it was fine to stay in the room. But hours later, their conditions continued to deteriorate, and the smell persisted.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was getting worse and worse,\u201d Schwander said. \u201cWe started tearing up and felt pain and started to get nauseous, and the headaches were worse. \u2026 We went to the front desk and said, \u2018This is messed up. We don\u2019t want to be in the room anymore. Can you tell us what those chemicals are that you just admitted to us were sprayed in the room?\u2019 They refused to give us any information. They just clammed up and refused to give us anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schwander and Knull were upgraded to a room at the Luxury Bahia Principe Bouganville, which shares a property with the Bahia Principe Hotel, but noticed the mood of the trip had changed, and they continued to get sicker.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe started getting dirty looks, and nobody wanted to help us anymore,\u201d Schwander said. \u201cThe front desk kept telling us to email a customer service desk, and meanwhile we\u2019re getting sicker and sicker. That, mixed with not really feeling very welcome anymore, made us decide to cut our vacation short.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schwander, the former director of Ambulance Services at St. Vincent Hospital in Leadville, said he recognized the symptoms as exposure to organophosphates: human-made chemicals commonly used in pesticides that can cause nausea, headaches and severe respiratory issues among other symptoms, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Doctors confirmed the couple could be dealing with organophosphate poisoning but told them they needed the name of the chemical they were exposed to so they could test for it.<\/p>\n

The couple began reaching out to lawyers in the Dominican Republic to convince the hotel to name the chemicals, eventually finding help from a lawyer out of Santa Domingo. But navigating the legal process out of country has been difficult.<\/p>\n

Following the deaths at the hotel last month, Knull and Schwander decided to speak out about their experience and only then learned the details of their lawsuit.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought I was going to get a lawyer who would go to the hotel and say, \u2018Hey, I\u2019m a lawyer, and I don\u2019t want to press a suit, but I want the name of the chemical.\u2019 Instead he pressed a million dollar suit, which he didn\u2019t tell us he was doing. \u2026 We didn\u2019t know we were pressing a million dollar lawsuit until we were being interviewed by CNN<\/a> in our kitchen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schwander said their sense of disillusionment with their lawyer has continued, as he\u2019s failed to update the couple or give them additional information on the process. However, their lawyer did note that he expects a judge\u2019s decision on the case within the next three months.<\/p>\n

But the ongoing legal battle is only one of their concerns. Schwander said since going public with their story, he\u2019s received a number of harassing messages from Dominican nationals through social media accusing them of defaming the hotel, damaging tourism in the country and trying to exploit recent deaths for profit (though the couple\u2019s lawsuit was filed before last month\u2019s fatalities). Schwander said the FBI and local law enforcement are aware of and monitoring the issue.<\/p>\n

Schwander said it\u2019s unclear how the exposure has affected him and Knull over the past year. He said along with some digestive issues requiring them to be careful about their respective diets, both have experienced issues exercising as hard as they were able to before the illness, noting a lack of stamina.<\/p>\n

Schwander also said he\u2019s spoken with numerous others with similar experiences to him and Knull since their story went public, checking into the same hotel in a similar time frame and getting sick.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow we\u2019ve had 30 or 40 people who have reached out to us,\u201d Schwander said. \u201cThey just didn\u2019t do what we did and decide to press a suit. And the only reason we pressed the suit was we wanted to identify the chemical. Something is happening, and it\u2019s hard for me to put my finger on it. I\u2019m not an investigator. But I\u2019m not going to go down there and check myself anymore; that\u2019s for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kaylynn Knull and Tom Schwander in the Dominican Republic before falling ill last year.Courtesy Tom Schwander A string of American tourist deaths at a hotel in the Dominican Republic has flung a Colorado couple into the center of attention a year after the two became ill while staying at the hotel. Kaylynn Knull of Monument […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-25561","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-12 03:46:11","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KIFT - The LIFT FM","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25561"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25585,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25561\/revisions\/25585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}