Three people, a Haitian man and an American couple who all worked for a Christian mission organization, were killed by gang members near Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Thursday night. The group had reportedly been kidnapped earlier within the evening after leaving a youth event hosted at a church.
Natalie and Davy Lloyd moved from Oklahoma to Haiti in 2022 to work for Missions in Haiti, Inc. The third person killed was the Haitian director of the organization, Jude Montis.
Davy’s parents, David and Alicia Lloyd, who founded the organization in 2000, shared the news of their death in a Facebook post around 2 a.m. Friday, saying the couple had been shot by gang members around 9 p.m.
“We are devastated,” wrote the couple of their post.
Natalie’s father, Missouri Representative Ben Baker, shared the news on Facebook with an image of the couple, expressing his grief and asking for prayers.
“My heart is broken in a thousand pieces,” Baker posted. “I’ve never felt this sort of pain. Most of you recognize my daughter and son-in-law Davy and Natalie Lloyd are full time missionaries in Haiti. They were attacked by gangs this evening and were each killed. They went to Heaven together.”
The three victims had just left the youth event after they were ambushed “by a gang of three trucks filled with guys,” in keeping with a post shared on the organization’s Facebook page before their deaths were confirmed.
“Their lives are in peril. I actually have been trying all my contacts to get a police armored automobile there to evacuate them out to safety but cannot get anyone to achieve this,” read the post, whose writer is unclear.
Missions in Haiti, an evangelistic organization, offers plenty of services for kids, including two everlasting residence homes, a college and a bakery. “We imagine the doors are still open for Haiti’s children to be modified by the Gospel,” reads the organization’s website.
The organization runs a “House of Compassion” near Port-au-Prince, where 36 children live, and the “Good Hope Boys Home,” which may house as much as 25. It also runs the Bon Espoir school (Good Hope School), a church and a bakery that employs adults who were previously raised in Missions in Haiti facilities and provides bread for its residential centers.
While many faculties have been forced to shut as a result of the gang violence, Missions in Haiti had remained open. In a May 2023 update to the web site, the organization called their area “relatively calm,” saying the gang leader of their area controlled one among the “nicer gangs” in Haiti.
“This gang works to maintain the ‘bad guys’ out of our area and we pray that they are going to proceed to be strong enough to maintain some semblance of peace on this area,” in keeping with the positioning.
An increasing variety of Christian missionaries working in Haiti have been the goal of kidnappings perpetrated by gang members. The criminal groups depend on kidnappings to become profitable through ransoms; UNICEF reported a rise within the variety of abductions since 2023, noting that girls and youngsters were most vulnerable to being kidnapped.
In October of 2021, a bunch of 17 Christian Aid Ministries missionaries (16 Americans and one Canadian) were kidnapped by gangs. Twelve escaped, and the others were later freed.
In the past few years, the country has plunged into turmoil, aggravated by the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021. In the months following the president’s assassination, armed gangs vying for control of the capital banded together and took advantage of the political unrest.
After Moïse’s death, the federal government was run by Prime Minister Ariel Henry, whose legitimacy was heavily contested through street protests, until he resigned in April of this 12 months. A transitional council was named to steer the country after Henry’s departure.
The gangs now control 90% of the capital and have blocked several roads into Port-au-Prince and town’s important port, stalling the flow of products into the country. Since January, gang violence has killed or injured 2,500 and displaced 35,000, in keeping with the United Nations.
In March, the country experienced a spike in violence when gang members freed hundreds of inmates jailed within the capital’s two largest prisons.
A peacekeeping mission led by Kenyan law enforcement officials, including officers from Chile, Jamaica, Grenada, Burundi, Nigeria and others, is ready to reach in Port-au-Prince this week to assist Haitian police fight the gangs. A complete of 1,000 Kenyan law enforcement officials will likely be deployed.
© Religion News Service
