Three missionaries, including American couple, killed by gang in Haiti

CNN
 — 

Three missionaries, including a married couple from the US, were killed in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, on Thursday evening.

Davy and Natalie Lloyd “were attacked by gangs this evening and were both killed,” Natalie Lloyd’s father, Missouri state Rep. Ben Baker, said in a Facebook post. “They went to Heaven together.”

Mission director Jude Montis, 45, was also killed. All three worked for Missions in Haiti, Inc., which has been operated by Davy Lloyd’s parents for more than two decades, according to the group’s website.

Davy Lloyd, 23, had a “love for Haiti,” his father David Lloyd told CNN. “His first language was Creole. He used to tell us when he was little that someday he was going to be a missionary in Haiti.”

He and Natalie Lloyd, 21, were ambushed as they left church in Port-au-Prince on Thursday evening, according to David Lloyd.

“Davy was taken to the house tied up and beat. The gang then took our trucks and loaded everything up they wanted and left,” a post on Missions in Haiti’s Facebook page said.

Three hours later, the organization posted that the three missionaries “were shot and killed by the gang about 9 o’clock this evening. We all are devastated.”

“Please pray for my family we desperately need strength. And please pray for the Lloyd family as well,” Baker said on social media early Friday. “I have no other words for now.”

Local emergency response service Haitian Emergency Response Operations (HERO) assisted in coordinating and managing the operation to retrieve the bodies and transport the remains of the American couple to a hospital morgue.

David Lloyd told CNN that he was on the phone with his son during the attacks.

The mission and church across the street have two security guards, but when the 23-year-old came out of the church around 6 p.m., “three pick-up trucks full of guys with guns overwhelmed them immediately,” he said.

The armed men dragged Davy Lloyd to the house, tied him up, and started looting the compound, according to his father, who said children from the orphanage were in the compound at the time.

After the gang left with its haul, Davy Lloyd called his father.

“He was injured, and he was hurt. He was nervous, and very very scared,” David Lloyd said. “He was begging me to find someone to get in there and help him, and I did all I could but I couldn’t locate anybody.”

Then more armed men arrived, he said.

“He told me, ‘I have to go down, something else is going down. I gotta go see what it is,’” David Lloyd recalled. “That was basically our last call.”

Around that time, someone shot one of the newly arrived gang members, sparking a violent backlash, he said.

“Davy went in and barricaded himself in my personal home with his wife and (mission director) Jude Montis. The gang shot that place up until they got the door busted down and shot them, and set Davy and Jude on fire.”

First response group HERO, an ambulance service in Port-au-Prince, confirmed to CNN that Davy Lloyd’s body was found burned at the scene.

Missouri Republican Gov. Mike Parson mourned the couple’s loss on X Friday morning, calling it “absolutely heartbreaking news.”

In a statement on Friday, the Haitian National Police said the killings were under investigation. “Our hearts goes out to the victims and their families. As always, we will continue to follow our mission and track down the perpetrators. We are currently operating in several gang-controlled areas in the country to try and liberate these areas. We will share more information about the incident at an appropriate time.”

In a statement to CNN Friday, the White House said it was aware of the reports and expressed condolences while urging for the expedited deployment of UN Security Council-approved international police force to the region.

“We are aware of the reports of the deaths of U.S. citizens in Haiti. Our hearts go out to the families of those killed as they experience unimaginable grief,” a national security spokesperson told CNN.

“The security situation in Haiti cannot wait. That is why yesterday, President Biden reiterated our commitment to support the expedited the deployment of the Multinational Security Support (MSS) Mission to bolster the Haitian National Police’s capabilities to protect civilians, restore the rule of law, and pave the way to democratic governance.”

Until now, the area around the Missions in Haiti compound had felt largely safe despite the violence in the rest of the city, according to David Lloyd, who left the country earlier this week.

“We haven’t really heard any gunshots in any of this. Our school’s been open, the church has been functioning, the bakery’s been selling bread every day.”

When flights resumed last week to Port-au-Prince’s Toussaint Louverture International Airport, Lloyd said he asked his son and daughter-in-law if they would like to leave Haiti, but they declined.

“We know Haiti is a very volatile situation, we know that it’s dangerous,” he said. “But we had a good rapport with the groups in our area, and they’d left us alone. But from what I understand this was an outside group that came in initially from about a mile away, that started it all.”

He believes the initial gang attack was just intended as a robbery, with the gangs trying to take what they can before the UN’s Multinational Security Support mission arrives.

“We have a pretty large mission compound, lots of stuff. With the international military force that’s supposed to be coming in any day, I think the gangs are trying to get all they can get because they realize their times may be coming to an end,” he said.

In a joint news conference with Kenyan President William Ruto on Thursday, Biden defended the decision not to deploy US troops to Haiti, telling reporters doing so could raise “all kinds of questions that can be easily misrepresented by what we’re trying to do, and be able to be used by those who disagree with us and against the interests of Haiti and the United States,” while pointing to material support, including equipment and training, the US has already provided to address the crisis.

The Facebook feed of Missions in Haiti has told the story of the increasing dire conditions in the country this year. “The gangs are still fighting for more control and chaos rules,” the organization posted April 23. “It seems the world has turned their backs on Haiti and it is going to be left in complete gang control.”

This story and headline have been updated with additional details.

CNN’s Donald Judd contributed to this report.