A missionary who devoted her life to helping poor people in Haiti was fatally shot at a crowded intersection in the nation’s capital on Friday.
Jean Bruner Noel, a Haitian Ministry of Justice official at the scene, identified the woman as Isabel Sola Matas, 51.
Noel said she was from Barcelona, Spain, but had lived in Haiti for years.
Noel said her purse was stolen after assailants shot her twice in the chest as she sat at the wheel of her old SUV.
She was attacked as she inched down a winding avenue filled with pedestrians and vehicles in Bel Air, a rough hillside neighborhood of shacks in downtown Port-au-Prince, he said.
A Haitian woman who was a passenger in the car was also shot twice and taken to a hospital. Her condition was not immediately known.
At Sacred Heart Catholic Church, Hans Alexandre described Sola as a “tireless servant of God” who helped build houses, worked as a nurse, fed the hungry and created a workshop where prosthetic limbs were made for amputees injured in Haiti’s devastating 2010 earthquake.
“The loss is immense,” the reverend said. “In killing her, they didn’t kill just one person, they killed the hopes of many people.”
Sola invited Alexandre and four other priests to live at her two-story home for more than a year after the previous church building and its rectory were toppled by the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
She helped raise tens of thousands of dollars to build a parish vocational school where Haitians could learn everything from catering to electrical wiring to music, Alexandre said.
One Haitian woman at Sola’s downtown home shouted in distress and anger when she heard about the killing.
“What a country this is! She did so very much for people here and this is what happens,” Suzie Mathieu said, covering her face with her hands.
Sola was a member of the Congregation of the Religious of Jesus and Mary, whose Web site describes it as a group of women from various countries who commit themselves to serving others.
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