According to police, a young US missionary couple is among the three people killed by gunmen in Haiti’s capital

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — A U.S. missionary couple was shot dead in Haiti’s capital by gangs who ambushed them as they left a youth group event at a local church, a police official and a religious group said.

A third person was killed in the attack on Thursday evening in the municipality of Lizon in the north of Port-au-Prince, Lionel Lazarre, head of a Haitian police union, told the Associated Press on Friday.

The killings came as the capital crumbles under relentless attacks from violent gangs that control 80 percent of Port-au-Prince, while authorities await the arrival of a police force from Kenya, part of a United Nations-backed mission to curb gang violence in the troubled Caribbean nation.

Two of the victims were a young married couple, Davy and Natalie Lloyd, according to a Facebook post by Natalie Lloyd’s father, Missouri State Rep. Ben Baker. The name of the third person killed was not immediately available.

“My heart is broken into a thousand pieces,” Baker wrote on Facebook on Thursday. “I have never felt such pain. Most of you know that my daughter and son-in-law, Davy and Natalie Lloyd, are full-time missionaries in Haiti. They were attacked by gangs tonight and both killed. They went to heaven together.”

The couple worked for Missions in Haiti Inc. The Claremore, Oklahoma-based organization was founded by David and Alicia Lloyd, Davy Lloyd’s parents. Natalie Lloyd’s Facebook page states that the couple married on June 18, 2022, and that she began working for the mission organization in August 2022. She frequently posted photos of Haitian children on her page.

The mission did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It runs a school in Lizon for more than 240 students, which it opened in September 2008, according to its website.

A Facebook post on the Missions for Haiti page late Thursday said Davy and Natalie were leaving a church with children when they were “ambushed by a gang of three trucks full of men.”

The post said Davy Lloyd was taken to a house where he was tied up and beaten. Another gang arrived and a shootout ensued.

The post said Davy, Natalie and the third person, listed only as Jewish, went to a house, but gangs “shot all the windows out of the house and continue to shoot. Their lives are in danger.”

Three hours later, another post from Missions in Haiti said: “Around midnight: Davy, Natalie and Jude were shot by the gang around 9pm tonight. We are all devastated.”

It was not immediately clear which gang or gangs were responsible for the fatal shootings.

However, a gang leader named Chyen Mechan, which means “bad dog” in Haitian, controls the area where the shooting took place. His real name is Claudy Célestin and he is a dismissed official from the Haitian Ministry of the Interior.

The leader of another gang, General Jeff, also controls an area near the neighborhood where the couple was killed. Both gangs are part of a coalition called Viv Ansanm, which means “living together.”

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Coto reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico. AP writer Jim Salter in O’Fallon, Missouri, contributed to this report.