by (CNN) — Three missionaries, including an American couple, were murdered this Thursday night in Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti.
Davy and Natalie Lloyd “were attacked by gangs tonight and were both murdered,” Natalie Lloyd’s father, Missouri state Rep. Ben Baker, said in a Facebook post. “They went to heaven together.”
The mission’s director, Jude Montis, 45, was also killed. All three worked for Missions in Haiti, Inc., run 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. As a child he told us that one day he would be a missionary in Haiti.”
Davy and Natalie Lloyd, 21, were ambushed as they left church in Port-au-Prince on Thursday night, according to their father, David Lloyd.
American missionaries Davy and Natalie Lloyd were killed in Haiti on Thursday, May 23, relatives said. Missions in Haiti
“Tonight, as Davy, Natalie and the kids were leaving Youth at Church, they were ambushed by a gang of three truckloads of kids,” the organization posted on its Facebook page Thursday. “Davy was taken to the house tied up and beaten. Then the gang took our trucks, loaded everything they wanted and left.”
Three hours later, Missions in Haiti posted that Davy and Natalie “were shot to death by the gang around 9 o’clock tonight. We are devastated.”
The local emergency response service, the Haiti Emergency Response Operations (HERO) Foundation, collaborated in coordinating and managing the operation to recover the bodies and transport the remains of the American couple to the morgue. of a hospital.
“Please pray for my family, we desperately need strength. And pray for the Lloyd family too,” Baker said on social media early Friday. “I have no other words for now.”
He later remembered the couple as people who put others before themselves, telling CNN Friday night that he praises their bravery.
“I don’t think you could find a better example of people who really had a deep love for the people of Haiti and looked out to help them in any way they could and were very influential in the various ministries that they were involved in,” Baker told Kaitlan Collins. CNN on “The Source.”
The last call
David Lloyd told CNN he was on the phone with his son during the attacks.
The mission and church have two security guards across the street, but when the 23-year-old left the church around 6 p.m., “three pickup trucks filled with armed men immediately ran over them,” he said.
The attackers dragged Davy Lloyd into the house, tied him up and began ransacking the compound, according to his father, who also said there were children from the orphanage in the compound at the time.
When the gang left with their loot, Davy Lloyd called his father.
“I was hurt and in pain. I was nervous and very scared,” David Lloyd said. “He was begging Me for him to find someone to come in and help him, and I did everything I could, but I couldn’t locate anyone.”
Then more armed men arrived, he said.
“He said, ‘I’ve got to go down, something else is going on. I’ve got to go see what it is,'” David Lloyd recalled. “That was basically our last call.”
At that moment, someone shot one of the newly arrived gang members, triggering a violent reaction.
“Davy entered and barricaded himself in my personal home with his wife and (mission director) Jude Montis. The gang fired on the place until they managed to break down the door, shot them and set Davy and Jude on fire.”
HERO, the ambulance service, confirmed to CNN that Davy Lloyd’s body was found burned at the scene.
Haitian police will collaborate with international law enforcement to investigate the killings, police spokesman Gary Desrosiers told CNN on Friday.
“This is an open investigation, but we are confident that we will arrest those involved. For now, we are working to protect the public and the community while we actively search for the perpetrators,” he declared.
This photo provided by Brad Searcy Photography shows Davy and Natalie Lloyd. (Brad Searcy Photography via AP)
Three hours later, Missions in Haiti posted that Davy and Natalie “were shot to death by the gang around 9 o’clock tonight. We are devastated.”
“Please pray for my family, we desperately need strength. And pray for the Lloyd family too,” Baker said on social media early Friday. “I have no other words for now.”
CNN has contacted Haitian officials and missions in Haiti for more information, and has contacted the White House and the US State Department for comment.
The Missions in Haiti Facebook feed has told the story of the increasingly dire conditions in the country this year. “Gangs are still fighting for more control and chaos rules,” the organization posted on April 23. “It seems that the world has turned its back on Haiti and will be under the total control of the gangs.”
On the Missions in Haiti website you can see Davy Lloyd talking about his childhood in the Caribbean country and doing manual labor in the mission facilities. According to his father, he survived a kidnapping in Port-au-Prince in 2005, when he was only 5 years old.
According to a report that year in the Tulsa World newspaper, Davy Lloyd, his sister and his foster sister were kidnapped during a carjacking while returning home from school. But police were able to locate the kidnappers, rescue the children and quickly return them to their parents, according to the report.
“We got them back 21 hours later,” David Lloyd recalls.
Security in Haiti cannot wait
In a statement to CNN on Friday, the White House said it was aware of the reports and expressed its condolences and urged the acceleration of the deployment of the international police force approved by the UN Security Council to the region.
“We are aware of the news of the deaths of American citizens in Haiti. Our hearts go out to the families of the deceased as they experience unimaginable pain,” a national security spokesperson told CNN.
“Security in Haiti cannot wait. That is why yesterday, President Biden reiterated our commitment to supporting the accelerated deployment of the Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS) and strengthening the capabilities of the Haitian National Police. Haiti to protect civilians, restore the rule of law and pave the way to democratic governance.”
Missouri Republican Gov. Mike Parson also mourned the loss of the couple in X on Friday morning, calling it “absolutely heartbreaking news.”
Until now, the area around the Misiones facility in Haiti had largely felt safe despite the violence in the rest of the city, according to David Lloyd, who was in the country until a few days ago.
“We haven’t actually heard any gunshots. Our school has been open, the church has been operating, the bakery has been selling bread every day,” he said.
When flights to Port-au-Prince’s Toussaint Louverture International Airport resumed last week, Lloyd said he asked his son and daughter-in-law if they wanted to leave Haiti, but they refused.
“We know that in Haiti the situation is very volatile, we know it is dangerous,” he said. “But we had a good relationship with the groups in our area, and they had left us alone. But, from what I understand, it was an outside group that initially came from a mile away that started it all.”
Natalie Lloyd’s father told CNN that the couple did not leave even when they had the opportunity to do so for the children in their care.
“They made the decision to stay even when everything got worse because they felt like if they left, then those kids would have nowhere to go,” Baker said on “The Source.”
Baker believes the gangs’ initial attack was only intended as a robbery, and that they were trying to take what they could before the UN Multinational Security Support Mission arrived.
“The mission facility is quite big, there is a lot of stuff. The international military force is supposed to arrive at any moment. I think the gangs are trying to get everything they can because they realize that their time may be running out. end,” he said.
At a joint news conference with Kenyan President William Ruto on Thursday, Biden defended the decision not to deploy U.S. troops to Haiti, telling reporters that doing so could raise “all kinds of issues that can be easily misrepresented by what we are trying to do, and can be used by those who disagree with us against the interests of Haiti and the United States,” while noting the material support, including equipment and training, that the United States already has provided to address the crisis.
The Missions in Haiti Facebook feed has told the story of the increasingly dire conditions in the country this year. “Gangs are still fighting for more control and chaos rules,” the organization posted on April 23. “It seems that the world has turned its back on Haiti and will be under the total control of the gangs.”
Editor’s note: This story and headline have been updated with additional details.
CNN’s Donald Judd and Kaanita Iyer contributed to this report.
