Dominican Republic police investigating the alleged brutal attack on a Delaware woman while she was vacationing at a Punta Cana resort said there are holes in the case.
“There is a lot of conjecture about the case, a lot of information that doesn’t match some of the statements,” Dominican Republic national police chief spokesman Col. Frank Durán said, referring to the alleged savage beating of 51-year-old Tammy Lawrence-Daley.
“We have to wait for the investigation to end.”
Lawrence-Daley, of Wilmington, said she was on vacation with her husband, Christopher, and their two best pals in January at the all-inclusive Majestic Elegance resort when she was attacked in an hours-long assault by a man wearing a resort uniform and was left for dead.
The mother of two teenage boys said the heinous beating, which left her battered and hospitalized, happened after she went to get a snack from a lounge at the beachfront resort.
“I took about 10 or so steps just swinging my wristlet back and forth, not a care in the world,” Lawrence-Daley wrote in a lengthy Facebook post last week, detailing the incident.
“That’s when I heard it. Heavy footsteps… one, two, three, four, then they sped up, and then before I could react I was plowed into from behind and immediately immobilized.”
Lawrence-Daley says she was pulled into an unlocked maintenance room, where she was beaten and “strangled multiple times to unconsciousness.”
Chris Daley and Tammy Lawrence-DaleyAP“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,” the mom wrote.
In a phone interview with the Associated Press, Lawrence-Daley said the “only opportunity” she got to see her attacker “was when he was strangling me.”
“And that’s when I saw the uniform. And when I tried to look up I couldn’t just because I was passing out at that point,” she told the news outlet.
Lawrence-Daley, who went to a local hospital after the incident, also said she’s unsure about whether she was sexually assaulted.
“We had to force them to do a rape kit and that didn’t happen until 48 hours later. And even at that point it was an external swab, that was it,” said Lawrence-Daley, who works at an insurance company.
The woman said she was previously told that Dominican Republic authorities would not investigate the attack unless she testified in a local court, which she did before flying back to the US.
Lawrence-Daley’s husband has accused local authorities of bungling the investigation.
“We were supposed to get a police report in February and we didn’t get that,” he previously told NBC10.
Following a three-month investigation and a failed bid to negotiate a settlement, the resort’s insurance company ultimately sent a letter saying that the Majestic Elegance bore no responsibility for the incident, since Lawrence-Daley could not identify her attacker as an employee.
According to the AP, Lawrence-Daley now has until late July to find a Dominican lawyer to take her case.
The Majestic Elegance said in the statement that it was cooperating with authorities and would not comment further out of respect for Lawrence-Daley’s “dignity and integrity.”
A spokesman for the US State Department has previously said the US government “continues to engage with local authorities on this case.”
With Post wires



