New details emerge on California couple who died in Baja hotel
A California couple who were found dead at a luxury hotel in Mexico’s Baja California Sur on Tuesday allegedly had food poisoning days before they died, according to a GoFundMe page.
The bodies of 28-year-old Abby Lutz, of Newport Beach, and 41-year-old John Heathco were discovered at the Rancho Pescadero, a luxury Hyatt hotel in El Pescadero, a small town 8 miles south of Todos Santos, ABC News reported.
A GoFundMe page posted on behalf of Lutz’s family says the couple may have died from carbon monoxide poisoning.
“While on a beautiful trip in Mexico, Abby and her boyfriend thought they had food poisoning and went to the hospital to get treatment,” Gabrielle Slate wrote on the page. “We were told they were feeling much better a few days later. We received a phone call saying that they had passed away peacefully in their hotel room in their sleep. We have been told it was due to improper venting of the resort and could be Carbon monoxide poisoning.” (SFGATE reached out to Slate and did not hear back before publishing this article.)
The Baja California Sur attorney general’s office confirmed in a statement Thursday that two people of foreign origin died in a hotel in El Pescadero on June 13 and said the preliminary investigation revealed the cause of death was “poisoning by substance to be determined.” The attorney general said there was no sign of violence associated with the deaths and that the American tourists were dead for 10 to 11 hours before they were found.
Hyatt said in a statement to SFGATE on Thursday that local authorities had not confirmed with the hotel a cause of death. “The safety and security of our guests and colleagues is always a top priority,” Rancho Pescadero general manager Henar Gil said in the statement. “We can confirm there was no evidence of violence related to this situation, and we are not aware of any threat to guests’ safety or wellbeing.”
Hyatt did not immediately respond to a request on Friday to comment specifically on the claim that the hotel room was poorly ventilated. But Gil said in a statement to ABC that he and his staff “do not believe that the cause of death was related to any issues with the hotel’s infrastructure or facilities, including carbon monoxide or a gas of any kind.”
The attorney general told ABC that Lutz was from Newport Beach. The attorney general did not provide Heathco’s place of residence to the TV station, but Heathco’s LinkedIn page reveals that he was from the same Southern California city. He was the founder of LES Labs, a health-focused nutritional supplement brand, and graduated from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, according to his LinkedIn.
Source: SFGATE
