By Joe Hickman, KY3 Staff and The Associated Press
Published: May. 24, 2024 at 10:00 AM CDT|Updated: May. 24, 2024 at 7:00 PM CDT
NEOSHO, Mo. (KY3/AP) - Southwest Missouri State Rep. Ben Baker announced on Facebook the deaths of his daughter and son-in-law in Haiti.
Davy and Natalie Lloyd served as missionaries in Haiti. State Rep. Baker says gangs attacked the couple on Thursday. The Baker family asked for prayers.
Haiti has endured poverty, political instability, and natural disasters for decades. In 2024, Gangs have directed their attacks on previously peaceful communities, leaving thousands homeless. Between January and March, more than 2,500 people in the country have been killed or injured related to the violence.
The slayings occurred as the capital crumbles under the relentless assault of violent gangs that control 80% of Port-au-Prince while authorities await the arrival of a police force from Kenya as part of a U.N.-backed deployment aimed at quelling gang violence in the troubled Caribbean country.
Springfield State Rep. and Minority Leader Crystal Quade released a statement regarding the deaths.
“On behalf of our caucus, I want to express our deepest condolences to Rep. Ben Baker and his family. The loss of a child is every parent’s worst nightmare. This is horrific in every sense. Our thoughts and prayers are with the Baker and Lloyd families during this time.”
Hannah Cornett, Davy Lloyd’s sister, told the AP that her brother was 23 years old and Natalie Lloyd was 21. They were going to celebrate their two-year anniversary in June and his birthday in early July.
Cornett said her parents are full-time missionaries in Haiti, and that she and her two brothers grew up there.
“Davy spoke Creole before he spoke English. It was home,” she said in a phone interview. “Haiti was all we knew.”
Cornett, 22, said her parents run an orphanage, school and church in Haiti, and that she and her brothers grew up with the orphans: “It was just one big happy family there.”
She said her older brother was outgoing, had built a garden and raised a lot of animals. While he went back to the U.S. for Bible college and then got married, he returned to Haiti with Natalie Lloyd to do more humanitarian work.
“They just had a lot of love for Haiti, and they just wanted to help the people there,” Cornett said. “That’s their calling.”
Cornett noted that Montis worked with her parents for 20 years and left behind two children, ages 2 and 6.
She said the night of the attack, three vehicles carrying gang members stopped the Lloyds and Montis as they crossed the street, hitting her brother in the head with the barrel of a gun. They forced him upstairs, stole their belongings and left him tied up. As people were helping untie Davy Lloyd, another group of armed gunmen showed up.
“Nobody knows what happened,” she said.
An unidentified person got shot and the gunmen opened fire as the Lloyds and Montis fled to the house where her parents live, Cornett said.
“They tried to take cover in there, but the gang shot up the house,” she said, adding that they were killed and their bodies set on fire.
Cornett said her mother flew back from Haiti about a month ago, and that her father and younger brother flew out Wednesday because things had been so calm in the neighborhood.
“Nobody expected this to happen,” she said between tears.
On Friday afternoon, Baker posted on Facebook that the bodies of Davy and Natalie Lloyd were safely transported to the U.S. Embassy.
The couple worked for Missions in Haiti Inc. The Claremore, Oklahoma, organization was founded by David and Alicia Lloyd, Davy Lloyd’s parents. Natalie Lloyd’s Facebook page said the couple married on June 18, 2022, and she began working with the missionary organization in August 2022. She frequently posted photos of Haitian children on her page.
The mission did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It runs a school in Lizon for more than 240 students that it opened in September 2008, according to its website.
A Facebook posting on the Missions for Haiti page late Thursday stated that Davy and Natalie, along with children, were leaving a church when “they were ambushed by a gang of 3 trucks full of guys.”
The posting said Davy Lloyd was taken to a house, where he was tied up and beaten. The post later said that Davy, Natalie and a third person, listed only as Jude, were at the house when shooting broke out. It said that gang members “shot all the windows out of the house and continue to shoot. Their lives are in danger.”
Three hours later, another posting from Missions in Haiti read: “Around midnight: Davy and Natalie and Jude were shot and killed by the gang about 9 o’clock this evening. We all are devastated.”
Alicia Lloyd, mother of Davy Lloyd, told the Oklahoma-based Claremore Daily Progress newspaper that her son “was one of these people who could do anything.”
“I hope something good can come out of this. We don’t see it now, but we don’t want (their lives) to be in vain,” she was quoted as saying.
U.S. Department of State spokesman Matthew Miller said the ambassador in Haiti was in touch with the families “who we know are experiencing unimaginable grief.”
“Unfortunately, this serves as a reminder that the security situation in Haiti cannot wait – too many innocent lives are being lost,” he said in a statement as he noted the U.S. government’s commitment for a swift deployment of the Kenyan-led mission.
It wasn’t immediately clear which gang or gangs were responsible for the fatal shootings.
However, a gang leader called Chyen Mechan, which means “mean dog” in Haitian Creole, controls the area where the shooting occurred. His real name is Claudy Célestin, and he is a dismissed civil servant from Haiti’s Ministry of the Interior.
The leader of another gang known as General Jeff also controls territory near the neighborhood where the couple was killed. Both gangs are part of a coalition known as Viv Ansanm, which means “Live Together.”
The coalition is responsible for launching large-scale attacks on key government infrastructure starting Feb. 29. Gunmen have attacked police stations, opened fire on the main international airport that remained closed for nearly three months before opening earlier this week and stormed Haiti’s two biggest prisons, releasing more than 4,000 inmates.
Gangs also are blamed for killing or injuring more than 2,500 people across Haiti from January to March, a 50% increase compared with the same period last year, according to the United Nations.
Kidnappings also are rampant, with targets including U.S. missionaries.
In October 2021, gang members kidnapped 17 missionaries, the majority U.S. citizens. Many in the group, which included five children, were held captive for more than two months before escaping.
Then in July 2023, gangs kidnapped a U.S. nurse and her daughter from the campus of a Christian-run school near Port-au-Prince. They were released nearly two weeks later.
The U.S. Department of State has long had a “do not travel” advisory for Haiti and urges any U.S. citizens in the country to depart as soon as possible.
On the Missions for Haiti website, the founders wrote that the organization was founded in 2000. It said it aimed to help with “the country’s biggest need — its children.”
“Although the entire nation is steeped in poverty, the children suffer the worst. Thousands are malnourished, uneducated, and headed for hopeless lives apart from Christ,” the website said.
A May 2023 newsletter posted on the mission website said Natalie “has been helping with the kids at the House of Compassion and assisting in our ACE school. Davy has been working on a lot of badly needed projects around our compound,” including building a laundry room and repairing bathrooms.
U.S. Senator Eric Burlison, a Republican from Ozark, is good friends with Baker from their days together as state legislators. Baker’s wife also works at Burlison’s Joplin office.
“When I was in the state senate and we’d have filibusters, Ben would come my office with his guitar,” Burlison recalled. “He’s just the kind of person that people want to be around. He’s one of the best guys you would ever meet.”
Burlison explained that he had been in touch with Baker as the tragedy was unfolding and tried to help.
“We were able to reach whatever’s left of the government in Haiti in trying to contact local law enforcement,” he said. “They were aware of the attack but clearly they didn’t get there in time.”
Baker’s biography mentions he’s a lay minister, missionary and former professor and dean of students at the Ozark Bible Institute in Neosho. And it’s obvious he’ll be leaning on his faith and many friends and family in the coming days.
When Burlison was asked what he said to Baker in such a difficult moment?
“What can you say except to just be there and love people,” he replied.
“No parent should ever have to go through something like this,” added Republican State Senator Lincoln Hough, another good friend of Baker who found out the news while in Italy on a working trip with Governor Mike Parson.
Noting that Democrats were also joining in with Republicans to show their support for Baker, Hough noted the united support.
“I would hope everyone would set aside whatever kind of political difference they might have and just lean in and give these guys a hug and say we’re here for ‘ya,” he said. “What he and his wife and the rest of his family (there are three other daughters) are going through right now, I just can’t comprehend it. Even if you disagree with him on policy issues, at the end of the day Ben is a good person, a good father and a good friend. He’s usually a pretty happy-go-lucky kind of guy. We work in a tough world and it’s too bad that we’ve just found out how bad it can be sometimes. I want those families and everybody associated with the work they were doing down there to know that their work was not done in vain. We appreciate the work that they were doing.”
Burlison’s overall thoughts on the tragedy?
“When you think about what happened to two Christian missionaries trying to serve an orphanage in Haiti, there’s no other way to describe it other than evil,” he said.
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Coto reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico. AP writer Jim Salter in O’Fallon, Missouri contributed to this report as did KY3′s Joe Hickman.
To report a correction or typo, please email digitalnews@ky3.com
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