S.I. woman dies during D.R. vacation

The son of a Staten Island mom who died while she visited the Dominican Republic to celebrate her birthday says he begged her not to go.

Leyla Cox turned 53 on Sunday. She died Monday of an apparent heart attack, Dominican authorities told her devastated and shocked family.

Her son William Cox, 25,, told the Staten Island Advance his mother left for the Dominican Republic on June 5 and was due home June 12.

“I am overwhelmed and confused and in shock,” he told the paper Thursday. “My family wanted her to not go on this vacation. I truly believe if my mother was not in the Dominican Republic, she would have been alive right now.”

Cox’s death is another in a string of deaths of American tourists in the island nation.

The Dominican Republic has called them isolated incidents, but they are adding up.

On Tuesday, Surely Miller, 40, vanished from a beach in the coastal town of Cabarete in Puerto Plata province. She was apparently dragged out to sea in a rip tide.

Among the others to die were Miranda SchauppWerner, 41, of Pennsylvania; and a Maryland couple, Edward Holmes, 63, and Cynthia Day, 49. They all died within five days in May in the same Bahia Principe resort complex.

Relatives of deceased visitors to the island wonder what really happened to their loved ones.

Back in April the brother of “Shark Tank” star Barbara Corcoran died of an apparent heart attack while vacationing in the Dominican Republic.

The FBI is assisting in toxicology analysis, but that may not help the Cox family, who told the Advance that they cannot afford to have her remains tested. They will be cremated and sent back home for burial, William Cox told the newspaper.

“I have a right suspicious,” Cox said. to be