GRAND PRAIRIE, Texas — One year and three days ago, Gary Rogers lost his brother.
"It seems like just yesterday, getting that phone call from my niece…it was just a shock," he said.
Grief is never easy, but it’s especially cruel when you wonder if what you were told about what happened is really true.
"There weren’t a lot of answers," Rogers said. "We still don’t have a lot of answers, I don’t think."
Mark Hurlbut raised a family in Grand Prairie, but loved the ocean. Last June, he was on the beaches of Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic with his wife. One night, he felt sleepy and sick. The next morning, he never woke up.
He was 62 years old.
"The emotion that comes with that kind of news is paralyzing," said his son Mark Hurlbut Jr., who Skyped with WFAA from his home in Phoenix. He said from the start, he felt like something was off. Getting any information was a struggle.
"Sometimes you know deep down in your gut something’s not good," he said.
Hurlbut's cause of death was ruled by authorities in the Dominican Republic as a heart attack, though his family said he’d never had heart issues before. The small seed of doubt among his brother and children started growing with every report of another otherwise healthy tourist dead.
Reports from families, resorts and the State Department show at least nine Americans died in the last 12 months in the Dominican Republic. That list does not include Mark Hurlbut. His family said it should.
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"We want his name added to the list of victims," Hurlbut Jr. said.
He has reported his father's case to the FBI, which confirms it is assisting the Dominican Republic in its investigation of these deaths. The U.S. Embassy there says in a statement that "local authorities have not established a connection between these incidents."
But the people left behind do feel connected, only able to wonder in their grief.
"There’s too many deaths in a short period of time," Rogers said.