Gang attack in Haiti leaves three dead and an orphanage on fire as international forces are delayed again.
Two young American missionaries were murdered in Haiti on Thursday amid the ongoing crisis of gang violence that has overwhelmed the country.
Davy and Natalie Lloyd and a Haitian staff member and church leader named Jude Montis were ambushed by three trucks full of gang members while coming out of a youth group service at Missions in Haiti in Port-au-Prince, according to the missionary organization’s Facebook page. While the armed men were stealing several vehicles and loading them up with loot from the mission, another gang arrived and the two groups violently clashed.
“Not sure what took place but one was shot and killed and now this gang went into full attack mode,” a missionary receiving reports in the US wrote. “Davy, Natalie and Jude [were] in my house at the end of the property using the star link internet to call me. So they are holed up in there, the gangs [have] shot all the windows out of the house and continue to shoot.”
Missions in Haiti reportedly tried to contact Haitian police without success. Then the phone lines went down.
“PLEASE PRAY,” Missions in Haiti asked its 4,500 Facebook followers. “Going to be a long night.”
By 9 p.m., the orphanage was on fire and the Lloyds and Montis were dead.
Montis was 20. Davy was 23. Natalie, 21.
“My heart is broken in a thousand pieces,” wrote Natalie’s father, Missouri State House Rep. Ben Baker. “I’ve never felt this kind of pain.”
Criminal gangs killed nearly 5,000 people in Haiti last year. Then, in 2024, the gangs banded together, turned against the politicians who had once collaborated with them for power, and launched coordinated attacks on the government. The gangs set police stations …