A U.S. missionary couple and a Haitian man who worked with them were shot and killed by gang members in Haiti’s capital after they were attacked while leaving a youth group activity held at a local church, a family member said Friday.
The attack happened Thursday evening in the community of Lizon in northern Port-au-Prince, Lionel Lazarre, head of a Haitian police union, told The Associated Press.
The slayings occurred as the capital crumbles under the relentless assault of violent gangs that control 80% of Port-au-Prince while authorities await the arrival of a police force from Kenya as part of a U.N.-backed deployment aimed at quelling gang violence in the troubled Caribbean country.
Two of the victims were a young married couple, Davy and Natalie Lloyd, according to a Facebook posting from Natalie Lloyd’s father, Missouri state Rep. Ben Baker. The third victim was Jude Montis, who was the country’s director of Missions In Haiti Inc.
“My heart is broken in a thousand pieces,” Baker wrote on Facebook on Thursday. “I’ve never felt this kind of pain. Most of you know my daughter and son-in-law Davy and Natalie Lloyd are full time missionaries in Haiti. They were attacked by gangs this evening and were both killed. They went to Heaven together.”
Hannah Cornett, Davy Lloyd’s sister, told the AP that her brother was 23 years old and Natalie Lloyd was 21. They were going to celebrate their two-year anniversary in June and his birthday in early July.
Cornett said her parents are full-time missionaries in Haiti, and that she and her two brothers grew up there.
“Davy spoke Creole before he spoke English. It was home,” she said in a phone interview. “Haiti was all we knew.”
Cornett, 22, said her parents run an orphanage, school and church in Haiti, and that she and her brothers grew up with the orphans: “It was just one big happy family there.”
She said her older brother was outgoing, had built a garden and raised a lot of animals. While he went back to the U.S. for Bible college and then got married, he returned to Haiti with Natalie Lloyd to do more humanitarian work.
“They just had a lot of love for Haiti, and they just wanted to help the people there,” Cornett said. “That’s their calling.”
Cornett noted that Montis worked with her parents for 20 years and left behind two children, ages 2 and 6.
She said the night of the attack, three vehicles carrying gang members stopped the Lloyds and Montis as they crossed the street, hitting her brother in the head with the barrel of a gun. They forced him upstairs, stole their belongings and left him tied up. As people were helping untie Davy Lloyd, another group of armed gunmen showed up.
“Nobody knows what happened,” she said.
An unidentified person got shot and the gunmen opened fire as the Lloyds and Montis fled to the house where her parents live, Cornett said.
“They tried to take cover in there, but the gang shot up the house,” she said, adding that they were killed and their bodies set on fire.
Cornett said her mother flew back from Haiti about a month ago, and that her father and younger brother flew out Wednesday because things had been so calm in the neighborhood.
“Nobody expected this to happen,” she said between tears.
On Friday afternoon, Baker posted on Facebook that the bodies of Davy and Natalie Lloyd were safely transported to the U.S. Embassy.
The couple worked for Missions In Haiti Inc. The Claremore, Oklahoma, organization was founded by David and Alicia Lloyd, Davy Lloyd’s parents. Natalie Lloyd’s Facebook page said the couple married on June 18, 2022, and she began working with the missionary organization in August 2022. She frequently posted photos of Haitian children on her page.
A Facebook posting on the Missions In Haiti page late Thursday read: “Around midnight: Davy and Natalie and Jude were shot and killed by the gang about 9 o’clock this evening. We all are devastated.”
Alicia Lloyd, mother of Davy Lloyd, told the Oklahoma-based Claremore Daily Progress newspaper that her son “was one of these people who could do anything.”
