Another American tourist is dead after going to the Dominican Republican on vacation. On Monday June 18th, the state department confirmed that Joseph Allen, 55, was found dead in his hotel room at the Terra Linda Resort in Sosua, on Thursday. As reported by the NY Daily News, Allen is now the ninth American tourist since 2018 to die in the small Caribbean country.
Allen, a New Jersey man, was vacationing with his friends, confirmed his sister Jamie Reed. Reed said Allen, Allen, who is survived by a 23-year-old son, “complained about being hot at the pool. He said he was going to his room to take a shower. When his friends came back, he said he wasn’t feeling 100% again, and said he was going to lie down for the night. The next morning his friend said he hadn’t heard from Joe before breakfast, so he knocked on his door and there was no response.” Allen’s friends asked the resort to perform a wellness check. But to their dismay, “They found him on the floor,” Reed said. “He had been there for a while. Rigor mortis had set in, and he was cold.”
Reed said that her brother was generally in good health before the trip and didn’t have any known health conditions. Also, he regularly visited the Dominican Republic a few times a year, so the family had not been concerned about the recent wave of deaths “because he does this all the time.” Reed also said that she reached out to Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) in hopes that the investigation in the Dominican Republic would not be blocked after her brother’s autopsy. “The families need answers,” she said. “We deserve answers … My brother was my best friend. I spoke to him every day. This is killing me.”
“My brother was a hard worker,” Allen’s brother, Jason Allen, told NBC. “He taught me a lot about sacrifice. … He taught me so many things about being a man. He was selfless.” Jason Allen said his family wants the matter investigated “no matter how much money or how much time it is”.
The U.S. Embassy in Santo Domingo is facilitating collaboration between US and Dominican investigators, as per a statement released last Tuesday. “The safety and security of U.S. citizens that live in, work in, and visit the Dominican Republic remains our highest priority,” Ambassador Robin Bernstein said. “These incidents are tragic and we offer our deepest condolences to those personally impacted.”
