SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Police in Haiti have arrested a suspect in the fatal shooting of a U.S. missionary couple and a Haitian man who headed a nonprofit in an attack by gunmen earlier this year that stunned many in the troubled Caribbean country.
The May 23 killings of missionaries Davy Lloyd and his wife, Natalie Lloyd, and Jude Montis, the country’s director for Missions in Haiti Inc., a Claremore, Oklahoma organization, was blamed on gangs rampaging across Haiti's capital and beyond.
The killings took place in the community of Lizon, in northern Port-au-Prince. The city has crumbled under the relentless violence of gangs that control as much as 80% of the Haitian capital.
A video posted on social media late Wednesday by Haiti’s National Police shows a 52-year-old man in handcuffs, accused of being involved in the killings of the Lloyds and Montis.
Arrests in high-profile killings are very rare in Haiti. In the video, the suspect denies any involvement in the killings. It wasn’t immediately clear if the man has been charged and if he has a lawyer.
Police claim the suspect’s phone was used to make calls after the killings, but the man rejected that accusation.
David Lloyd, the father of Davy Lloyd, told The Associated Press over the phone from Oklahoma on Thursday that he wasn’t aware of the circumstances behind the suspect's arrest.
The young couple — Davy was 23 and Natalie just 21 — were supposed to celebrate their two-year wedding anniversary in June.
“They loved the Haitian people and were dedicated to that country,” Lloyd said of his son and daughter-in law.
Natalie Lloyd was the daughter of Missouri state Rep. Ben Baker, who was cautiously optimistic over the news about the arrest and said he hopes that all those “responsible face the consequences.”
“We want justice for what took place,” Baker told the AP.
David Lloyd said his son had called him the night of the attack, to tell him that gangs had forced them to open the mission gates and looted the compound before he abruptly hung up. He said his son and others came under gunfire before the gang broke into the home and killed them.
They later set the house on fire, Lloyd said, adding that more than about 100 gang members were believed to have participated in the attack.
The mission compound has since closed, the first time in 26 years, and the children the mission served relocated to a safer community.
“There are too many gangs in the area,” he said. “The country as a whole seems hopeless."
From January to May, more than 3,200 killings were reported across Haiti, with gang violence leaving more than half a million people homeless, according to the United Nations.
In February, gangs launched coordinated attacks on key government infrastructure, raided police stations and opened fire at the main international airport, forcing it to shut down for nearly three months. Gunmen also stormed into Haiti’s two biggest prisons, freeing thousands of inmates.
With Haitian authorities unable to deal with the chaos, a U.N.-backed police force from Kenya arrived in June to lead a multinational mission, nearly two years after Haiti's government requested urgent deployment of a foreign force.
In the police video, a narrator says the investigation in the case is ongoing: “Whoever is involved in the killings, your turn will come up. You will be arrested.”
Associated Press reporter Evens Sanon in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, contributed to this report.
FILE - A funeral procession for mission director Judes Montis, killed by gangs alongside two of his U.S. missionary members, makes its way to the cemetery after his funeral ceremony in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, May 28, 2024. The service also honored the lives of Davy and Natalie Lloyd, featured on the photo on the back of the hearse, a married couple in their early 20s who was with Montis when gunmen ambushed them late May 23, as they left a youth group activity held at a local church. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Disgraced ex-movie mogul Harvey Weinstein has been indicted on additional sex crimes charges in New York ahead of a retrial in his landmark #MeToo case, Manhattan prosecutors said at a court hearing Thursday.
The indictment will remain under seal until Weinstein is arraigned on the new charges, which could happen as early as Sept. 18. Assistant District Attorney Nicole Blumberg disclosed in court that the indictment charges “Mr. Weinstein with additional crimes” and that multiple accusers are prepared to testify against him.
Weinstein, 72, is recovering from emergency heart surgery Monday at a Manhattan hospital to remove fluid on his heart and lungs and was not at Thursday's hearing.
Prosecutors retrying Weinstein’s overturned rape conviction disclosed last week that they had begun presenting to a grand jury evidence of up to three additional allegations against Weinstein, dating as far back as the mid-2000s.
They include alleged sexual assaults at the Tribeca Grand Hotel, now known as the Roxy Hotel, and in a Lower Manhattan residential building between late 2005 and mid-2006, and an alleged sexual assault at a Tribeca hotel in May 2016.
Because the indictment is under seal, it was not known whether the new charges involved some or all of the additional allegations.
“We don’t know anything," Weinstein’s lawyer, Arthur Aidala, said outside court. “We don’t know what the exact accusations are, the exact locations are, what the timing is."
In April, New York’s highest court overturned Weinstein’s 2020 conviction on rape and sexual assault charges involving two women and ordered a new trial. Weinstein’s retrial is tentatively scheduled to begin Nov. 12.
Prosecutors said they would seek to combine any new charges with ones previously brought against Weinstein so that they could be tried together. Weinstein’s lawyers oppose that, arguing that prosecutors were seeking to bolster their original case with additional charges involving other accusers.
Aidala said Weinstein’s defense team won't be ready to go to trial in November on the new charges. By law, he said, they'll have 45 days to file court papers challenging the prosecution’s request to try the original and new indictments at the same time, pushing the fight into the weeks before a possible trial.
Weinstein’s new charges come after prosecutors in Britain announced last week that they would no longer pursue charges of indecent assault against Weinstein, who was the most prominent villain of the #MeToo movement in 2017 when women began going public with accounts of his behavior.
Weinstein, who co-founded the film and television production companies Miramax and The Weinstein Company, has long maintained that any sexual activity was consensual.
Also Thursday, Judge Curtis Farber granted a defense request to have the ailing Weinstein remain at Bellevue Hospital indefinitely instead of being moved back to the infirmary ward at New York City’s Rikers Island jail complex. Farber also ordered Weinstein’s attending physician at Rikers Island to testify at a closed-door hearing about the ex-studio boss' health issues.
Weinstein’s surgery Monday came after his third trip to Bellevue Hospital to have fluid drained, Farber said. He has a variety of maladies requiring medication and treatment that causes him to retain water in his arms, legs, abdomen and around his heart, and he needs constant monitoring to ensure the buildup of fluids isn’t deadly, the judge said.
“If Mr. Weinstein dies because no one has taken the authority to stop what may be the death of Mr. Weinstein because of this back-and-forth transfer from one institution to another, it would be a miscarriage of justice to say the least,” Weinstein’s lawyer Barry Kamins told Farber. “It would be a travesty of justice.”
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office had signaled for months that new charges were imminent against Weinstein, who was once one of the most powerful people in Hollywood, having produced films such as “Pulp Fiction” and “The Crying Game.”
In July, prosecutors told a judge they were actively pursuing claims of rape that occurred in Manhattan within the statute of limitations. They said some potential accusers who were not ready to come forward during Weinstein’s first New York trial had indicated they were now willing to testify.
In vacating Weinstein’s conviction, New York’s Court of Appeals ruled that the trial judge, James M. Burke, unfairly allowed testimony against him based on allegations from other women that were not part of the case. Burke is no longer on the bench.
Prosecutors have said one of the accusers in that case, Jessica Mann, is prepared to testify against Weinstein again. In a statement, she said the new charges “show that this Grand Jury, like so many others, can see clearly through his facade for what he truly is: a predator who must be held accountable for his crimes.”
“For those who continue to have the courage to come forward against Harvey, you are not alone,” Mann said. “I will stand alongside you as we fight for a future where monsters like Harvey no longer hide in our closets, they sit alone behind bars.”
It’s unclear if the second accuser, Mimi Haley, would participate. Her lawyer, Gloria Allred, declined to comment.
The Associated Press does not generally identify people alleging sexual assault unless they consent to be named, as Haley and Mann did.
Weinstein, who had been serving a 23-year sentence in New York when his conviction was quashed, was convicted in Los Angeles in 2022 of another rape.
His 16-year prison sentence in that case still stands, but his lawyers appealed in June, arguing he did not get a fair trial in Los Angeles. Weinstein has remained in custody in New York’s Rikers Island jail complex while awaiting the retrial.
FILE — Harvey Weinstein appears for a pretrial hearing in Manhattan criminal court, July 19, 2024, in New York. (Adam Gray/Pool Photo via AP, File)
