Assassinated Haitian President Jovenel Moïse‘s body was found riddled with a dozen high-caliber bullets — with one of his eyes blown out, a local judge has said.
“We found 12 holes in the president’s body,” Pétion-Ville deputy justice of the peace Carl Henry Destin told Haiti’s largest newspaper, Le Nouvelliste, saying they were “made with a large-caliber weapon.”
“The president’s office and bedroom were ransacked. We found him lying on his back, blue pants, a white shirt smeared with blood, his mouth open, his left eye blown out,” the judge told the French-language paper.
“We saw a bullet impact at the level of his forehead, one in each nipple, three at the hip, one in the abdomen,” the judge revealed.
Despite Moïse having his own security detail — part of a specialized unit of the Haitian National Police — only the president and his wife, Martine Moïse, were shot during the hit squad’s raid.
The first lady was later flown to Miami, Florida, for surgery and is expected to survive.
One of the couple’s three children, daughter Jomarlie Jovenel Moïse, was home at the time, but hid from the assassins in her brother’s bedroom, Destin told the local paper.
The brother — who was not identified — was tied up alongside a maid, the judge said.
As well as the bullets in the president’s body, “many 5.56- and 7.62-mm cartridge cases were found between the gatehouse and the interior of the residence,” Destin told the paper of the raid that was partially caught in video footage.
Haiti’s National Police late Wednesday said they had killed four of the suspected assailants and arrested two others — and were still engaged in a fierce gun battle that they expected to last through early Thursday.
“We are chasing them so that either in the exchange of fire they will be killed or we will apprehend them,” Police Chief Leon Charles said. “We will continue to hunt them down.”
Haiti’s ambassador to Washington, Bocchit Edmond, said the killers were “professional” mercenaries disguised as US Drug Enforcement Administration agents.
This is an excerpt from the New York Post.
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