(Français)
Joel François, 72, a truck driver working for the Port-au-Prince mayor’s office, went with his son, James Louis, 38, from their poor neighborhood of La Saline to get some pills for his numerous ailments on Sun., Jan. 18. As they were returning home at about 1 p.m., in front of the Our Mother of Perpetual Help Church in Belair, Haitian National Police (PNH) officers shot both of them dead, along with a nearby dog.
Their bodies (and that of the dog) lay dead in the street for hours as terrified neighborhood residents hid in their homes.
This terrible murder was just one of dozens that PNH death-squads, along with Erik Prince’s 200 or so Salvadoran mercenaries working for Vectus Global, have carried out over the past month in Port-au-Prince’s poor neighborhood of Belair, which has been a regular battlefield in Haiti’s political struggles over the past four decades.
The latest spasm of killings began on Dec. 30, 2025, when cops shot dead Nojeurson Jolyva, 16, during their first bloody excursion of their current offensive into the neighborhood, according to Marc André “Toto” Alexandre, who is generally known as Belair’s unofficial spokesman.
He provided to Haïti Liberté many of the photographs and testimonies with which this report was constructed.
The next slaughter came on Jan. 1, 2026, when at least 12 neighborhood residents were killed. They included charcoal vendor, Lenette Eliassaint, 72; Sammy Romulus, 27, who was shot three times and died at a local hospital later that night; Stephenson Payen, 17; Laguerre Rumenigge Junior, 43; Pierre-Noel Jeff-Georges Fils, 42; Claudy Jatelin, 34; Johnny François, 55, who worked at the Education Ministry; and Réginald Hyppolite, 65.
Most of the people were killed in their homes or in the courtyards outside of them, Alexandre reported.
At the intersection of Rue des Césars and Avenue Monseigneur Guilloux, the cops also shot to death three men, whose identities local Belair residents did not know. One of them was known to be a beggar.
On the evening of Jan. 7, a large police and mercenary deployment savagely attacked an apartment building on Rue des Fronts-Forts across from La Rose Kindergarten, killing at least 15 people, including children. The large-caliber bullets which riddled Its walls left giant holes in the building’s exterior. Among those killed were a young woman known only as Thana, 20, Jefferson Barthélémy, 14, Jérôme Bastien, 60, Jean Wystil, 29, Guerda Germain, 31, Paulo Jeanty, 33, and Lexi Dieurilus, 75.
“There were no bandits in that building,” Alexandre explained. “Nobody can claim there were any bandits there… They shot people who were showering, with soap in their hand [a reference to Jean Wistil]. After killing all the people inside, the mercenaries claimed they found a gun in one room. That’s how they justified the killings.”
Alexandre had difficulty gathering details about the remainder of the dead because, after the police and mercenary attacks, many Belair residents fled from their homes, fearing more to come.
Indeed, more killings occurred on Mon., Jan. 12, when cops shot dead Gieya Louis, 34 and motorcycle taxi driver Roody Alténord, 25, on Rue Lamarre.
Then on Sun., Jan. 25, mercenaries questioned and almost immediately shot to death Edyson Dorcé Metuchela, 25, a bread and sausage vendor who had been a student at the Lycée Alexandre Pétion (high school).
“They just finished speaking to him,” Alexandre explained over a video filmed shortly after Metuchela’s murder. “They asked him where he lived, and he told them, and then they just shot him.”
After the massacres, Alexandre and others helped the extremely poor families of Belair hold funerals for their slain loved ones. Many still have funerals to hold but lack the money to pay for them. For readers who would like to contribute to defray the cost of funerals for those killed over the past month, they can send money through any money transfer service to Toto Alexandre’s designated representative: Flore Nicolas, phone 011 509 3405 0143.
