Mysterious Tourist Deaths Prompt Poisoning Investigation In Asia

Two mysterious tourist deaths in Asia involving young women who inexplicably fell ill and died within two days of one another have sparked an investigation into whether the twenty-somethings were fatally poisoned before their sudden passings.

The mysterious tourist deaths involve Kari Bowerman, 27, and Cathy Huynh, 26, English tutors in South Korea who had been backpacking across Vietnam while on vacation from their jobs. But according to CNN, the two tourist deaths were potentially not the only under the same unexplained circumstances.

Two Canadian sisters — Noemi Belanger, 25, and Audrey Belanger, 20 — died under similar conditions and in a similar way in June in Thailand, leading media sources to link the mysterious tourist deaths as family members seek answers as to what killed Bowerman and Huynh.

Prior to the last set of mysterious tourist deaths, Bowerman and Huynh received medical treatment for dehydration, vomiting and difficulty breathing. The Belanger sisters were discovered in their hotel room about 12 hours after their deaths, both covered in vomit.

Bowerman’s sister, Jennifer Jaques, says that discovering the fate of her sister and the other women who died has been a nightmare, and that local authorities have not been very helpful in assisting families after the mysterious tourist deaths:

“It’s been a nightmare trying to get information … No hospital reports. No police report. No nothing. Whatever happened to her we need to make sure doesn’t happen to somebody else.”

According to the network, one theory has emerged in the mysterious tourist deaths — a pesticide banned in most of the world, chlorpyrifos, is commonly used to eradicate bedbugs in Vietnam and Thailand. It has been suggested that the pesticide may have been the cause of the string of mysterious tourist deaths.