The murder of two U.S. missionaries: Details of the case

The murder of two U.S. missionaries, including a married couple, on Thursday, May 23, in Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, continues to generate grief and criticism of security in this Caribbean country.

Davy and Natalie Lloyd were the two U.S. missionaries killed.

“They were attacked by gangs tonight and both were killed,” said Natalie Lloyd’s father, Missouri State Representative Ben Baker.

The mission director, Haitian-born Jude Montis, 45, was also killed.

All three worked for Missions in Haiti, Inc. run by Davy Lloyd’s parents for more than two decades, according to the group’s website.

Davy Lloyd, 23, had a “love for Haiti,” his father David Lloyd told CNN. “His first language was Creole. He used to tell us as a little boy that someday he would be a missionary in Haiti.”

The two slain U.S. missionaries, Davy and Natalie Lloyd, 21, were ambushed as they were leaving church in Port-au-Prince Thursday night, according to their father, David Lloyd

“Tonight, as Davy, Natalie and the children were leaving the youth at church, they were ambushed by a gang of three truckloads of kids,” the organization posted on its Facebook page Thursday.

The murder of two U.S. missionaries: Worldwide rejection

The fact where the murder of two U.S. missionaries continues to generate the rejection of the missionary organizations of the world.

“Davy was taken to the house tied up and beaten. Then, the gang took our trucks, loaded everything they wanted and left,” published spokespersons for the missionary organization in Haiti.

Three hours later, Missions in Haiti posted that Davy and Natalie “were shot and killed by the gang around 9 o’clock tonight. We are devastated.”

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The two U.S. missionaries killed were only engaged in gospel preaching and social work on the island.

The local emergency response service, the Haiti Emergency Response Operations Foundation (HERO), assisted in coordinating and managing the operation to recover the bodies and transport the remains of the U.S. couple to a hospital morgue.

The two U.S. missionaries killed were a couple who put others before themselves.

The mission and church have two security guards across the street, but when the 23-year-old left the church around 6 p.m., “three vans full of armed men immediately ran them over,” he said.

Before the two murdered U.S. missionaries were attacked, they were on a call from the United States.

The attackers dragged Davy Lloyd into the house, tied him up and began ransacking the compound, according to his father, who also said there were children from the orphanage in the compound at the time.

When the gang left with their loot, Davy Lloyd called his father.

“He said, ‘I have to go downstairs, something else is going on. I’ve got to go see what it is,’” David Lloyd recalled.

At that point, someone shot one of the newly arrived gang members, triggering a violent reaction.

Haitian police will work with international law enforcement to investigate the killings.

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“This is an open investigation, but we are confident that we will arrest those involved. For now, we are working to protect the public and the community while we actively search for the perpetrators,” he said.

So far, the area around the Missions facility in Haiti had felt largely safe despite the violence in the rest of the city, according to David Lloyd, who was in the country until a few days ago.

Last week flights resumed to Port-au-Prince’s Toussaint Louverture International Airport, Lloyd said he asked his son and daughter-in-law if they wanted to leave Haiti, but they declined.

At a joint press conference with Kenyan President William Ruto on Thursday, Biden defended the decision not to deploy U.S. troops to Haiti.

He added that doing so could raise “all kinds of issues that can be easily misrepresented by what we are trying to do, and can be used by those who disagree with us against the interests of Haiti and the United States.”