Tropical Storm Cristobal drenching the Bahamas

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic – Tropical Storm Cristobal doused the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands with heavy rainfall as it moved slowly on a northern track in the Caribbean. One man died over the weekend and two other people were reported missing when they were caught up by swollen rivers on the island shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said Cristobal may strengthen into a hurricane later in the week over the open Atlantic. The storm’s center was expected to curve away from the U.S. East Coast.

The man who died was drowned when he tried to drive his pickup truck across a rushing river in the Dominican Republic’s Hato Mayor, a province northeast of the capital of Santo Domingo, Juan Manuel Mendez, the country’s emergency operations director, said Sunday.

The two missing people were swept away late Saturday by a river that burst its banks in the western Haiti port town of Saint Marc. “We’re still looking for the bodies,” said Luckecy Mathieu, a civil protection coordinator.