Maryland couple found dead at Dominican Republic resort

A Maryland couple visiting the Dominican Republic has been found dead at the resort where they were staying.

Family members of Cynthia Day, 49, and Nathaniel Holmes, 63, told NBC Washington that the engaged couple had been vacationing on the island this week.

Day’s sister, Sonya Jackson, said the U.S. Embassy confirmed their deaths, according to the NBC news station. The cause of death was not immediately disclosed, but the local newspaper Dominican Today reported that there were no indications of violence.

They were due to return home Thursday.

"It should have never happened," Holmes’ daughter, Dajuan Holmes-Hamilton, told NBC Washington.

Reports of their deaths came days after a Delaware woman claimed in a Facebook post that she had been brutally beaten while on vacation in January at the Majestic Elegance resort in the Dominican Republic.

“The next 8 hours brought me pain and fear,” Tammy Lawrence-Daley wrote. “I was strangled multiple times to unconsciousness. My lifeless body was drug down concrete stairs to an underground waste water area. I was kicked in the head, I was beaten with a club. And then strangled again for the kill; at which time he disposed of my body into an area I refer to as the ‘hole’. I was unconscious multiple times during this savage attack, so I have no idea what else was done to me during that time. Somehow I survived.”