CNN
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Three missionaries, including an American couple, were killed in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, on Thursday evening.
Davey and Natalie Lloyd “were attacked by a gang tonight and both were killed,” Missouri Congressman Ben Baker, Natalie Lloyd’s father, said in a Facebook post. “They have gone to heaven together.”
Also killed was mission director Jude Monteith, 45. The three men worked for Mission in Haiti, a company run by Davy Lloyd’s parents for more than 20 years, according to the group’s website.
Davey Lloyd, 23, “loved Haiti,” his father, David Lloyd, told CNN. “His first language was Creole. As a young boy, he would often say he wanted to be a missionary in Haiti someday.”
David Lloyd said he and Natalie Lloyd, 21, were ambushed as they were leaving a church in Port-au-Prince on Thursday evening.
“Davey was tied up and beaten before being taken to a house. The gang then got into our truck, loaded him up with whatever they wanted and left,” a post on Mission in Haiti’s Facebook page read.
Three hours later, the group posted: “Our three missionaries were shot and killed by a gang around 9pm today. We are all heartbroken.”
Haiti Emergency Response Operations (HERO), a local emergency response service, helped coordinate and manage the operation to retrieve the American couple’s bodies and transport them to the hospital morgue.
“Please pray for the family. We desperately need strength. Please pray for the Lloyd family as well,” Baker said on social media early Friday. “I have nothing else to say at this time.”
He later recalled the couple as people who put others before themselves, and told CNN on Friday night that he admired their courage.
“I don’t think you can find a better example of someone who had a really deep love for the Haitian people and a vision to help them in any way they could and who made a huge impact in Haiti in the various service efforts that they were involved in,” Baker told CNN’s Caitlin Collins on “The Source.”
David Lloyd told CNN that he was on the phone with his son during the attack.
He said there were two security guards at the mission and church across the street, but when the 23-year-old man came out of the church about 6 p.m., “they were quickly overwhelmed by three pickup trucks with men with guns inside.”
Davy Lloyd’s father said the gunmen dragged him to the house, tied him up and began looting the property, where children from an orphanage were also present at the time.
After the gang left with the loot, Davy Lloyd called his father.
“He was injured, he was hurt, he was nervous and very scared,” David Lloyd said. “He was begging me for someone to go inside and help him. I did everything I could but I couldn’t find anyone.”
More armed men then arrived, he said.
“He told me, ‘I’ve got to get down. Something else is going on. I’ve got to go and see what it is,'” David Lloyd recalled. “That was basically our last call.”
Around that time, he said, unknown assailants shot one of the newly arrived gang members, sparking a violent backlash.
“Davey, along with his wife and (mission president) Jude Monteith, came into my house and barricaded themselves in it. The gang shot up there, broke down the door, shot at them and set Davey and Jude on fire.”
Emergency service HERO confirmed to CNN that Davy Lloyd’s body was found burnt at the scene.
Haitian police will work with international law enforcement agencies to investigate the murder, police spokesman Gary Desrosiers told CNN on Friday.
“This is still an ongoing investigation, but we are confident we will be able to apprehend those involved. For now, we are committed to protecting the public and our community while actively searching for the perpetrators,” he said.
On the Mission in Haiti website, Davey Lloyd talks about growing up in the Caribbean and doing manual labor on the mission grounds, but his father says he was just five years old when he was kidnapped in Port-au-Prince in 2005.
As the Tulsa World reported that year, Davey Lloyd, his sister and step-sister were carjacked on their way home from school, but police were able to track down the kidnappers, rescue the children and quickly return them to their parents.
“We got them back 21 hours later,” David Lloyd recalled.
In a statement to CNN on Friday, the White House said it was aware of the reports, offered its condolences and called for the immediate deployment of an international police force authorized by the United Nations Security Council to the region.
“We are aware of reports that an American citizen has been killed in Haiti and our hearts go out to the victim’s family during this unimaginable grief,” national security spokesman David K. Wilson told CNN.
“The security situation in Haiti is urgent, which is why President Biden yesterday reiterated our commitment to support the rapid deployment of a Multinational Security Assistance (MSS) mission to strengthen the Haitian National Police’s capacity to protect civilians, restore the rule of law, and establish a path to democratic governance.”
Missouri’s Republican governor, Mike Parson, also mourned the couple’s deaths Friday morning, calling the news “truly heartbreaking.”
David Lloyd, who was in Haiti until a few days ago, said the area around the Mission in Haiti facility had generally felt safe, despite the violence in other parts of the country.
“During this time, we didn’t hear a single gunshot. Schools were open, churches functioned and bakeries sold bread every day,” he said.
When flights resumed at Port-au-Prince’s Toussaint Louverture International Airport last week, Lloyd said she asked her son and daughter-in-law if they wanted to leave Haiti, but they refused.
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“We know the situation in Haiti is very unstable and dangerous,” he said, “but we have good relationships with local groups and they have left us alone. But my understanding is that this was an outside group that first infiltrated from about a mile away, and that’s where it all began.”
Natalie Lloyd’s father told CNN that the couple had the opportunity to separate in order to care for their children but did not.
“They made the decision to stay even though things got worse because they felt that if they left, their children would have nowhere to go,” Baker told The Source.
He believes the initial gang attack was merely a robbery attempt, with the gangsters trying to grab as much as they could before the United Nations Multinational Security Assistance Mission arrived.
“Our mission facility is quite large and has a lot of supplies. With international forces expected to arrive at any moment, I think the gangs realise their time may be coming to an end and are trying to grab all the supplies they can,” he said.
Speaking at a joint news conference with Kenyan President William Ruto on Thursday, Biden defended the decision not to send U.S. troops to Haiti, telling reporters that doing so would “raise all kinds of questions that could easily be misconstrued by our efforts and be used against us and against Haitian and American interests,” and pointed to material support such as equipment and training the U.S. has already provided to deal with the crisis.
The Haiti mission’s Facebook feed described the worsening situation in the country this year: “Gangs are still fighting for more control and reign of chaos,” the organization posted on April 23. “It appears the world has turned its back on Haiti, leaving the country completely under the control of gangs.”
This story and headline have been updated with additional details.
CNN’s Donald Judd and Kahnita Iyer contributed to this report.
