Haitian bus passengers shot to death:
“They were heading home from work or school”
At least four passengers were killed and many more injured when a bus carrying people home from work and school came under a volley of gunfire in Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital, on May 7. The shooters remain unknown, though there is some indication that the gunfire came from an armored police vehicle. This tragedy is reflective of the level of insecurity in the Haitian capital, where simply getting on a bus to go to work or school can mean risking your life.
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Several grisly videos showing the aftermath of an attack on a bus in Port-au-Prince, Haiti on May 7 have been circulating on social media. Due to the graphic nature of these videos, our team decided to only include a number of screengrabs. In these images, you see four people who seem to have been killed by the gunfire, as well as several people with injuries, including a woman sustained serious injuries to her left leg. You can see blood on the seats, floor and ceiling of the bus.
"The victims were innocent civilians”
Petrus Lerice is the spokesperson for an organisation called the Association of Haitian Owners and Drivers (APCH). He told our team that the bus left the town centre in Port-au-Prince and was traveling towards Carrefour, a community located to the southwest of the capital, when it came under attack near the Silvio Cator stadium. Lerice said that after the bus came under fire, the driver managed to drive it to the OMEGA police station in Carrefour.
There were at least four passengers killed – three men, including a student, and a woman – as well as a number of people who were seriously injured. Someone told me that another person died of their injuries, but I haven’t been able to verify that. Some of the injured students were picked up by their parents, others were taken directly to the hospital… so we are still not sure about the number of victims. These people were hit with high calibre bullets, even though they were innocent civilians, who were going home after work or school.
We don’t know who fired on the bus. The gangs accuse the police but there are also rumors blaming the gangs. I also don’t know why the bus was targeted. What is certain is that there was both an armored police vehicle and gang members at the location where the shooting occurred. Moreover, there was no gunfire or detonations until the bus came under attack, so it wasn’t like there were clashes going on between the police and the gangs ahead of time.
There are a number of indications that the gunfire came from the armored police vehicle, though it is impossible to confirm who was inside of it.
"It’s not always police in the armored vehicles because gangs have stolen them from the police,” Lerice says.
A video filmed by a passenger shows that the bus driver was able to keep driving the bus, even after it came under fire and was filled with dead and injured people.
“Armored vehicle fired on…” the person filming says. He then calls to the driver, telling him to hurry in order to get the injured to the hospital. Later, he tells the driver that he’s taken a dangerous road.
“Driver! Don’t you see that other drivers are avoiding this road? The passengers told you not to take it!”
Another video shows the bus stopped. It is empty, except for the bodies left inside.
“A yellow bus stopped in Fontamara with four dead,” the person filming says.
"If the driver is to be believed,” he adds. “It’s an armoured vehicle that opened fire on the bus [...]. You live in a country where you are in equally as much danger from the police as from criminals."
"The driver said that armed men told him that he needed to pay them to leave safely”
Our team spoke to a man we are calling Widmy in order to protect his identity. He went to the OMEGA police station and heard the story firsthand:
I went and spoke to the driver there. He was in shock, but he said that he had been picking up passengers at a stop near the stadium when four armed men told him that he needed to pay them to leave safely. If not, the bus would be burned.
The driver then said that a small police armored vehicle saw the armed men and opened fire. The armed men took shelter behind the bus and then fired back. Apparently, one of the armed men and two passersby were also killed.
Increasingly, gangs are forcing drivers - especially bus drivers - to pay to pass, especially on the highway to the southwest of Port-au-Prince. It’s dangerous to refuse them.
“There are around eleven toll stations in this area, including five in Mariani,” said our source. He said that the gangs want to put in another toll station near the place where the bus came under attack.
Lerice, for his part, agreed that there has been a rise in illegal tolls, as well as an increase in the amount of money the gangs ask bus drivers to pay.
"Before, they were asking for 1,500 gourdes [around 10 euros] at the toll station in Martissant, nears Fontamara. In the past year, they’ve been demanding 4,000 gourdes [around 27 euros]."
The Haitian police have not released a statement about the bus attack on May 7. Our team contacted them, but they did not respond. Haitian news agency AlterPresse said that they had not received a response from the police spokesperson either.
However, an anonymous “police source” did speak to Haitian media outlet Juno7. This source said that the bus had not been specifically targeted. He said that the passengers killed and injured on the bus were essentially the collateral damage of the exchange of fire between police, inside the armored vehicle, and the armed individuals who this source claimed went into the bus.
According to this source, “the bus was taken over by heavily armed individuals who exchanged fire with the police”. The source further added that the armed men planned to use the bus “as cover to get back to their base”.
"Gang members sometimes stop buses to search the passengers”
This attack highlights just how dangerous it can be for Haitians who are simply trying to get between Port-au-Prince and its suburbs, especially by bus, says Lerice:
Bus passengers are regularly killed. Sometimes they are outright murdered. Other times, they are killed by stray bullets. When that happens, there are often police and armed gangs nearby, so we don’t always know where the gunfire originated. That said, in theory, when there are clashes between the police and gangs, bus drivers stop and wait before driving off.
There are always gang members in the streets, with weapons. Sometimes, they stop the bus to search passengers and goods, to check if there are weapons on board.
They will also look at people’s texts. Depending on what they see, they might accuse them of being “informants” or “intelligence” or even police. They can kill someone on the spot for that.
There are also kidnappings on the roads. They are so common that we barely speak of them anymore.
Gangs aren’t the only road dangers that travelers in Haiti encounter. The roads are also in poor shape, as are the buses, and these both cause frequent accidents.
Young American couple doing missionary work
are killed by gangs in Haiti
An Oklahoma-based missionary group working in Haiti’s capital was attacked by gangs Thursday night, leaving the daughter of a Missouri state representative, her husband and a third member of the group dead, a founder of the organization said.
David Lloyd III and his wife, Natalie, who were full-time missionaries, were attacked by gangs and killed Thursday evening, Lloyd’s mother said in an interview Friday.
Alicia Lloyd, who founded Missions in Haiti in 2000 with her husband, David Lloyd, confirmed the deaths of their son, David Lloyd III, 23, known as Davy, and his wife, Natalie Lloyd, 21. Natalie Lloyd is the daughter of Missouri state Rep. Ben Baker, who also announced the couple’s death in a statement on his Facebook page.
The identity of the third person killed was not immediately known.
Alicia Lloyd said her son was crying and scared for his life when he called her to tell her that he and their compound were under attack.
“He had already sustained a beating at the hands of a gang and they had come into the compound,” she said in the interview.
The gang members then took the organization’s vehicles and other items and left, she said.
After they beat her son, Alicia Lloyd said, he was released and neighbors came to check on him. But then things took a turn after a second gang showed up, she said.
“And that’s when he and his wife and one of our Haitian employees that have been with us for 20 years” were holed up in one of the organization’s small houses for two to three hours, she said.
“Now this gang went into full attack mode,” the organization said in a post on its Facebook page before the three had been killed.
The couple and the other longtime member of the organization used a satellite internet link to make calls and recount what was happening as it was occurring, the organization’s Facebook post said.
The post went on to say that the gangs had shot all the windows out of the house and attempts to get a police armored car to evacuate the missionaries to safety were unsuccessful. The organization said it had tried to negotiate with the gang and offer them money to let the three go but concluded the post by saying it had lost communications.
In a separate statement on its Facebook page posted just hours later, the organization announced that the three had been killed at about 9 p.m.
Alicia Lloyd said the gang members had set the house on fire, broke down the door to the home and shot the Lloyds and the other longtime employee.
Haiti has been in turmoil for decades and is increasingly under the control of gangs, which have taken over most of the capital city of Port-au-Prince, including police stations. Gang violence reached unprecedented levels after the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. The first quarter of 2024 was the country’s deadliest, with 2,500 or so people killed or injured in gang violence, the United Nations has said. Haiti’s main international airport —Toussaint-Louverture airport in Port-au-Prince — reopened Monday for the first time in nearly three months after gang violence forced authorities to close it in early March.
A spokesperson for the National Security Council said it was aware of the reports of the deaths of U.S. citizens in Haiti and that President Joe Biden supports multinational efforts to stabilize the country and protect its people.
“Our hearts go out to the families of those killed as they experience unimaginable grief,” the spokesperson said.
Alicia Lloyd said that until recently, no one was able to leave the compound because all the roads around it were blocked and that Missions in Haiti would have to smuggle in supplies for its children’s home.
Still, she said, she was in shock and disbelief Friday. She was in Haiti at the time of the attack, and her husband had just left a day earlier to return to the U.S., she said.
David Lloyd III grew up in Haiti and loved its people, his mother said. At age 18, he went to the U.S. to attend a Bible college, she said, and returned to Haiti after graduating to serve the people there.
“It’s sad for me to say, but he died doing what he loved because he just wanted to help the Haitian people,” she said. “Because growing up there, he saw their suffering. He saw the misery there, and he just wanted to do something to make a difference.”
Alicia Lloyd remembered her daughter-in-law as having a “real sweet spirit.”
“She just was such a blessing to our family,” she said. “She just was one of those people that would just get in and do whatever needed to be done.”
Baker said he taught David Lloyd III at Ozark Bible Institute and College in Missouri before Natalie had shown an interest in him. Baker also graduated from the Pentecostal school, where he was once the dean of students.
“He always had a heart for Haiti,” Baker said in an interview Friday.
David Lloyd III had made clear to Natalie when they were dating that he felt a “calling” to return to the country after attending the university, he said.
Baker said he and his wife advised Natalie to visit Haiti before she and David got married and decided to move there, which she did.
“Obviously, they worked that out and they realized they were meant to be together,” he said.
They married in June 2022 and moved to Haiti that fall. The Bakers last saw their daughter and son-in-law in January when they came to the U.S. for a family wedding.
Even as conditions worsened there, including in the last few months when they had no way out, they chose to stay because they didn’t want to leave the children they had been caring for who would have had nowhere to go, Baker said.
“We supported that, as hard as it was for us,” Baker said. “We supported that decision.”
Missions in Haiti had managed to befriend some of the gang members, who believed the missionaries were there for the right reasons and knew they were doing good for the people, Baker said.
“It’s a corrupt country,” he said. “So they had to just learn to exist in that system.”
He learned of the attack as it was unfolding and said he felt helpless that he could not intervene as a dad and protect them, especially his daughter whom he described as an unbelievably sweet human being who loved kids.
“I don’t feel resentment toward the people,” he said. “I still want people to be reached there in Haiti.”
“The bottom line is, I know they gave their lives,” he added. “They put themselves above others.”
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