The families of two Americans, including a man from Wichita, Kansas, have reported that the two died suddenly while visiting the Dominican Republic. 

Fox News reports the pair was identified as 41-year-old Chris Palmer, a veteran from Wichita who died April 18, 2018, and 69-year-old Barbara Diane Maser-Mitchell, a retired nurse from Pennsylvania who died on Sept. 17, 2016.

The State Department confirmed their deaths on Thursday. Both died of heart attacks, according to Dominican authorities.

Palmer was staying at the Villa Cocotal Palma resort in Punta Cana. He’d been working at a Mexican resort and went to the Dominican Republic in hopes of selling timeshares and teaching scuba diving there, friends and family told Fox News.

Dominican authorities said in reports obtained by the network that he had pulmonary edema. But those who knew him feared that wasn’t the whole story.

“As soon as he died, I wondered if he was poisoned, if he was drugged,” Bernadette Hiller, a former girlfriend. “He was healthy as a horse.”

Palmer was found dead in his room after aspirating his own vomit, the report says.

“We are devastated and are seeking answers,” Hiller told Fox News. “This was so sudden and unexpected. This has been a nightmare for his family.”

The network reports Maser-Mitchell died during her stay at the Excellence resort in Punta Cana. Read more here

The Dominican Republic's top tourism official on Friday downplayed a spate of deaths among American tourists as an exaggeration, CNN reports.

"It's not true that there has been an avalanche of American tourists dying in our country, and it's not true that we have mysterious deaths here," Tourism Minister Francisco Javier Garcia told reporters.

The deaths have left some Americans wondering if they should cancel upcoming trips to the Caribbean nation.

The State Department has a standing travel advisory for the Dominican Republic, urging travelers to have caution because of crime, but it has not issued a travel alert specific to the traveler deaths.