A US couple were among three missionaries shot and killed by gang members after they were attacked leaving a church in the Haitian capital, which has endured months of extreme violence with deadly assaults on hospitals, prisons and government buildings.
Missions in Haiti, an Oklahoma-based nonprofit founded in 2000, said that Davy and Natalie Lloyd and a third person were killed in Port-au-Prince by armed men on Thursday evening.
The third victim was identified by US media outlets as Jude Montis, the Haitian director of Missions in Haiti.
Photo: AFP / Missions in Haiti
“Davy and Natalie and Jude were shot and killed by the gang about 9 o’clock this evening,” Missions in Haiti wrote on Facebook on Friday. “We all are devastated.”
“The bandits entered the house and looted it before murdering the missionaries,” a police spokesperson said, adding that an investigation is under way.
Earlier, Missions in Haiti said on Facebook that the missionaries were ambushed by a gang traveling in three vehicles.
Photo: Reuters
“Davy was taken to the house tied up and beat,” it said. “The gang then took our trucks and loaded everything up they wanted and left.”
Members of another gang then arrived and “went into full attack mode,” the post said.
Hannah Cornett, Davy Lloyd’s sister, said that her brother was 23 years old and Natalie Lloyd was 21. They were going to celebrate their two-year anniversary next month.
Cornett said her parents are full-time missionaries in Haiti, and that she and her two brothers grew up there.
“Davy spoke Creole before he spoke English. It was home,” she said in a phone interview. “Haiti was all we knew.”
Responding to the deaths, the White House called for the swift deployment of a Kenyan-led multinational force in Haiti to tackle rampant gang violence.
“The security situation in Haiti cannot wait,” a US National Security Council spokesperson said, adding that US President Joe Biden had pledged to support the “expedited deployment” of the force in talks with Kenya’s president on Thursday.
“Our hearts go out to the families of those killed as they experience unimaginable grief,” the spokesperson said.
A spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also expressed condolences, calling it “just another example of the violence that spares no one in Haiti.”
The main airport partly reopened this week after being closed since early March, when the powerful and well-armed gangs that control much of the country went on a coordinated rampage they said was aimed at toppling then-Haitian prime minister Ariel Henry.
Lamarre Lamy, a pastor with International Missions Outreach, was shaken by the missionaries’ deaths, saying the work of such humanitarians is crucial for young Haitians amid the violence and chaos.
“Many young people are at university thanks to their support,” Lamy said.
“We shouldn’t be dying like this, you cannot spend a day without hearing about murder,” Lamy said.
Kenyan President William Ruto vowed during his visit to Washington that his country’s security deployment to Haiti would seek to crush the gangs.
The Biden administration had searched extensively for a country to take the lead on the mission to Haiti after it ruled out sending US forces, which have a long history of intervention in the country.
Additional reporting by AP
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