In one neighborhood, residents tied suspects’ arms with rope and forced them to walk while yelling “Move! Move!” until they could hand them over to police.
Some Haitian citizens helped round up suspects in the days following Haitian President Jovenel Moïse ‘s assassination on July 7, the Associated Press reported. Police have detained over 20 suspects so far, while others were killed by authorities in pursuit. Some suspects attempting to avoid arrest were apprehended by a group of Haitians, who roughed them up and even slapped them at some points, AP reported. In another neighborhood, residents tied suspects’ arms with rope, forcing them to walk until they could hand them over to police while yelling “Move! Move!” Two suspects were chased and detained by a crowd in another community before police took them and transported them to a police station. Some of the crowd followed the police to the station and called for authorities to hand the suspects back, chanting that they were going to “burn” them. “They killed the president!” they chanted. “Give them to us.” For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below. The crowd later set fire to a couple of cars riddled with bullet holes that they believed the suspects had abandoned at the business where the shootout occurred. The government decried their actions, saying they were destroying valuable evidence. The cars did not have license plates and inside one of them was some water and an empty box of bullets. Watching the scene unfold from above was Giovanni, who declined to give his full name out of fear for his life. He sleeps and works in an abandoned building where he makes furniture. At around 7 a.m., he said he saw a group of white foreigners wielding large weapons and stopping cars along the road that leads to the president’s house and the business where the shootout occurred. He said they were speaking Spanish, but he could not understand what they were saying. “They had control of the area,” he said, adding that some later fled in different directions in the hills above the store. He said he also saw Haitian police arrest the suspects after embassy officials gave them access to the yard. Joanne Massillon, a 45-year-old mother of three who lives nearby, said she heard police shouting: “There’s the white guy! The white guy! The white guy!” She said she didn’t dare venture out at that moment. “If you hear ‘Boom! Boom!’ you stay inside,” she said. Other men are also accused of helping plot the assassination, including a former rebel leader who rose to prominence following a 2004 coup and a Haitian man who is a physician and church pastor.
