SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Police in Haiti have arrested a suspect in the fatal shooting of a U.S. missionary couple and a Haitian man who headed a nonprofit in an attack by gunmen earlier this year that stunned many in the troubled Caribbean country.
The May 23 killings of missionaries Davy Lloyd and his wife, Natalie Lloyd, and Jude Montis, the country’s director for Missions in Haiti Inc., a Claremore, Oklahoma organization, was blamed on gangs rampaging across Haiti’s capital and beyond.
The killings took place in the community of Lizon, in northern Port-au-Prince. The city has crumbled under the relentless violence of gangs that control as much as 80% of the Haitian capital.
A video posted on social media late Wednesday by Haiti’s National Police shows a 52-year-old man in handcuffs, accused of being involved in the killings of the Lloyds and Montis.
Arrests in high-profile killings are very rare in Haiti. In the video, the suspect denies any involvement in the killings. It wasn’t immediately clear if the man has been charged and if he has a lawyer.
Police claim the suspect’s phone was used to make calls after the killings, but the man rejected that accusation.
David Lloyd, the father of Davy Lloyd, told The Associated Press over the phone from Oklahoma on Thursday that he wasn’t aware of the circumstances behind the suspect’s arrest.
The young couple — Davy was 23 and Natalie just 21 — were supposed to celebrate their two-year wedding anniversary in June.
“They loved the Haitian people and were dedicated to that country,” Lloyd said of his son and daughter-in law.
Natalie Lloyd was the daughter of Missouri state Rep. Ben Baker, who was cautiously optimistic over the news about the arrest and said he hopes that all those “responsible face the consequences.”
“We want justice for what took place,” Baker told the AP.
David Lloyd said his son had called him the night of the attack, to tell him that gangs had forced them to open the mission gates and looted the compound before he abruptly hung up. He said his son and others came under gunfire before the gang broke into the home and killed them.
They later set the house on fire, Lloyd said, adding that more than about 100 gang members were believed to have participated in the attack.
The mission compound has since closed, the first time in 26 years, and the children the mission served relocated to a safer community.
“There are too many gangs in the area,” he said. “The country as a whole seems hopeless.”
From January to May, more than 3,200 killings were reported across Haiti, with gang violence leaving more than half a million people homeless, according to the United Nations.
In February, gangs launched coordinated attacks on key government infrastructure, raided police stations and opened fire at the main international airport, forcing it to shut down for nearly three months. Gunmen also stormed into Haiti’s two biggest prisons, freeing thousands of inmates.
With Haitian authorities unable to deal with the chaos, a U.N.-backed police force from Kenya arrived in June to lead a multinational mission, nearly two years after Haiti’s government requested urgent deployment of a foreign force.
In the police video, a narrator says the investigation in the case is ongoing: “Whoever is involved in the killings, your turn will come up. You will be arrested.”
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Associated Press reporter Evens Sanon in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, contributed to this report.