Three missionaries, including two Americans from Oklahoma, were killed Thursday night in Haiti.
All three were members of Missions in Haiti, which operates a school, two churches and a children’s home in Port-au-Prince, according to The New York Times.
David Lloyd III, 23; his wife, Natalie Lloyd, 21; and the organization’s Haitian director, Jude Montis, 20, were shot to death in a gang attack.
David Lloyd was the son of the couple who founded Missions in Haiti in 2000 — David and Alicia Lloyd.
Natalie Lloyd was the daughter of Missouri Republican state Rep. Ben Baker.
“My heart is broken in a thousand pieces. I’ve never felt this kind of pain,” Baker said in a Facebook post.
“They went to Heaven together,” he said.
“Please pray for my family we desperately need strength,” Baker said. “And please pray for the Lloyd family as well. I have no other words for now.”
Missions in Haiti wrote about the incident on its Facebook page.
“Davy and Natalie and Jude were shot and killed by the gang about 9 o’clock this evening,” the group said. “We all are devastated.”
In a previous post, it explained what it knew of the circumstances and asked for “urgent prayer.”
“This evening when Davy, Natalie and the kids were coming out of Youth at the church they were ambushed by a gang of 3 trucks full of guys,” the Christian mission said. “Davy was taken to the house tied up and beat. The gang then took our trucks and loaded everything up they wanted and left.
“Another gang came after to see what was going on and if they could help, so they say. No one understood what they were doing, not sure what took place but one was shot and killed and now this gang went into full attack mode.
“Davy, Natalie and Jude was in my house at the end of the property using the star link internet to call me. So they are holed up in there, the gangs has shot all the windows out of the house and continue to shoot. Their lives are in danger.
The post said efforts were underway to get a police response Thursday night.
Haiti has been steadily careening into deeper and deeper chaos that gathered speed after the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.
Hours before the missionaries were killed, President Joe Biden, who has faced criticism for doing too little to address the chaos, said his support for having Kenyan troops try to restore order there was enough.
“There’s a lot going on in this hemisphere, and we’re in a situation where we want to do all we can without us looking like America once again is stepping over, deciding this is what must be done,” Biden said, according to USA Today.
“Haitians are looking for help as well as the folks in the Caribbean are looking for help. And so, we checked out with a number of other countries,” said the president, who had no immediate comment Friday on the deaths of the missionaries.
“I’m just at a total loss,” David Lloyd said of his son’s death, according to the Miami Herald. “I’m just in total shock. I haven’t grieved. I haven’t done anything else. I haven’t eaten. I can’t think.”
He said he was on the phone with David Lloyd III moments before the killings.
“I was on the phone with my son when that was going down. He said, ‘Dad, we got a commotion again. I’ve got to go see what’s going on,’” Lloyd said.
“They eventually got into the house and killed all three of them and set their bodies on fire,” he said.
David Lloyd said of his son, “Creole is his first language and Haiti has his heart.”
He recalled the young man telling girls, “Don’t even talk to me if you’re not willing to live in Haiti the rest of your life, ’cause that’s my home.”
