Davy and Natalie Lloyd: Insights into the U.S. effort to bring home two young American missionaries killed in Haiti

CNN
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The first commercial U.S. flight to Haiti in months completed a dreary round-trip flight Thursday morning, returning with the bodies of a young American couple killed by a gang in Port-au-Prince last week.

The remains of Davy and Natalie Lloyd were accompanied on the flight by U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Dennis Hankins and U.S. security officials, according to a source familiar with the operation. They will be sent to their families after the flight from Haiti to Miami.

“This morning, the remains of Davy and Natalie Lloyd safely departed on a flight back to the United States. There will be several stops along the way and they will arrive safely in Neosho, Missouri tomorrow afternoon,” the families said in a statement posted on the X-account of Natalie’s father, Missouri State Rep. Ben Baker. They asked for privacy during the transfer.

“We praise the Lord for his protecting hand in this nightmare. The funeral service will be held early next week, with further details to follow tomorrow,” it continued.

The State Department confirmed Thursday afternoon that both bodies had arrived in the United States.

Their return, sources said, came after a week of extraordinary negotiations between the U.S. government and Haitian authorities, local organizations and even gang leaders – all in a city paralyzed by criminal gangs that have prevented the import of vital humanitarian supplies, destroyed medical facilities and blocked major roads.

In a statement to CNN, a US State Department spokesperson confirmed that US officials in Haiti are “assisting in arranging the repatriation of the deceased and their personal belongings to the United States, in accordance with the wishes of the families.”

“We will continue to work around the clock until the remains can be returned to the United States,” the spokesman added.

The reopening this month of Toussaint Louverture International Airport – previously the target of coordinated gang attacks – is a key step in connecting Haiti’s capital to the rest of the world after months of violence in the gang-ridden Caribbean nation. Local airline Sunrise had already resumed flights in early May.

However, these advances were overshadowed by the murder of three missionaries last week – the Lloyds and the Haitian mission director Jude Montis – in an incident that attracted much attention and drew the attention of American authorities and the White House.

The three were attacked in the early evening on the grounds of the Haitian Missions Church and Orphanage in the Lizon district of Port-au-Prince. The attack began with an armed robbery by a gang that ransacked the premises and stole supplies and aid.

A second gang later arrived at the scene and came under fire, leading to deadly retaliatory attacks on mission personnel, according to Davy Lloyd’s father and founder of Missions in Haiti, David Lloyd, who spoke to his son by phone that evening.

Montis and the Lloyds barricaded themselves in their residence on the compound, but that wasn’t enough, Lloyd told CNN. Missions in Haiti announced their deaths that night.

In the hectic hours following the attack, officials from the offices of Missouri Representative Eric Burlison, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, and the U.S. National Security Council contacted the State Department and the U.S. Embassy in Haiti.

“As soon as I learned of the situation, we immediately contacted the State Department for assistance. Unfortunately, assistance could not arrive in time to prevent the tragedy,” Burlison said in a statement to CNN.

“Since their murder, we have been working closely with Senator Hawley’s office, the State Department and airlines to bring them home to their families,” he added. “I want to thank everyone who is supporting us in this effort.”

Natalie Lloyd’s mother, Naomi Baker, is an employee in Burlison’s office and her father, Ben Baker, is a state representative in Missouri.

After the shock of the deaths, it became clear early Friday morning that Davy and Natalie’s bodies needed to be urgently recovered – an operation that would be carefully orchestrated by the U.S. government, multiple sources say.

There was no time to lose.

“The bodies could have either been desecrated or kidnapped,” a person involved in the operation told CNN. “So we recovered them from a crime scene.”

Davy Lloyd’s family contacted the private rescue service HERO Client Rescue on Friday morning to collect the bodies, according to a HERO employee who asked not to be identified for security reasons. The rescue group agreed to coordinate the mission and kept the U.S. Embassy informed, the employee also said.

But attempts to reach the site were blocked by armed gang members on the road, according to a source familiar with the situation. She told CNN there was an extraordinary intervention by US authorities in Haiti, who acted quickly and brokered negotiations between several gangs in the region to allow access to the bodies.

In a phone call with several gang leaders, Vitel’homme Innocent – a gang leader whose armed group Kraze Baryé was not involved in the attacks but controls an area around the U.S. embassy – claimed ownership of the bodies of the two Americans.

“After the call, I did everything possible to communicate with the people who control the area to gain access and recover their bodies,” Innocent told CNN.

He added: “It was a sad story when I learned that a Haitian and two Americans who had come to help the population died in horrific circumstances.”

Innocent himself has a $2 million bounty on his head for allegedly kidnapping American citizens, but he denies this and says he hopes to one day defend himself.

Soon the emergency vehicles were allowed to drive on to the charred site where they had found the three bodies.

The remains of Davy, 23, and Natalie Lloyd, 21, were eventually transferred to a local hospital morgue for safekeeping, according to HERO. Sources involved in the operation told CNN that an examination of the bodies revealed signs of blunt force trauma and severe burns on Davy, but no gunshot wounds.

Removing human remains from a crime scene is a serious breach of protocol, even in a city where lawlessness reigns, but Haitian officials agreed to examine the remains after they were relocated, a source told CNN.

The Haitian National Police did not respond to CNN’s request for comment for this article, but police spokesman Gary Desrosiers told CNN in a statement last week that authorities were working with international law enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute the killings.

The 45-year-old director of the missions in Haiti, Jude Montis, was buried this week in Port-au-Prince. Local press reports showed that large crowds had gathered outside the church where his funeral was held and that a funeral band could later be seen in the cortege following his hearse down the street.

But the Lloyds’ bodies were still waiting to be returned to Missouri.

Natalie’s father, Ben Baker, described the ongoing hurdles in bringing back his daughter and son-in-law in a message on his Facebook page signed by Baker’s spokeswoman Cassidy Anderson.

“We are currently working to recover the bodies of Natalie and Davy. We need to obtain a permit that allows us to transport their bodies without full embalming, as there are no facilities in Haiti that offer this service. After that, we need to find an airline willing to carry out the transport. We pray that everything goes smoothly,” it said.

The last remaining hospital in Port-au-Prince with the resources to perform embalming is the General Hospital near the Champ de Mars, sources told CNN, but street wars between gangs and police have turned the famous downtown park into an unstable no-man’s land.

Waiting for news of the bodies’ safe return strained the nerves of family and supporters. Over the weekend, Hawley released a public letter calling on the Biden administration to ensure their safety.

“Natalie’s and Davy’s bodies must be transported to the final departure point and there are great risks until then. The situation on the ground in Port-au-Prince remains anarchic,” he warned.

But on Thursday morning, the bodies of Davy and Natalie Lloyd finally began their long journey home.

This is a developing story and has been updated.

CNN’s AnneClaire Stapleton, Hande Atay Alam, Natalie Barr and Nikki Carvajal contributed to this report.