Gang attack on Haitian hospital leads to unlikely triumph for the police
PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI >> The bullets began piercing the windows of the hospital as women cradling young children ran from room to room searching for a safe place to hide while the heavily armed gang drew closer.
The louder the gunfire grew, the more the women screamed until a hospital employee begged them to stay quiet and ordered them to lie on the ground. Mothers with babies and shaky hands forced one breast into their tiny mouths to keep them quiet, wondering if they would live through Wednesday's attack on the Fontaine Hospital Center and the surrounding community in the Haitian slum of Cite Soleil.
A couple of hours went by. The gunfire never ceased. Suddenly, an employee appeared, told them to get up and go to the front yard without making noise. Police were waiting with armored cars.
“Get in! Get in! Get in! Get in quickly!” the employees shouted as women carrying children and babies stepped into buses and private ambulances that officers would escort out of Cite Soleil, a rare triumph for a police department that is understaffed, under resourced and outmatched by gangs. Employees also joined the dozens of evacuees, carrying plastic containers that cradled newborns on oxygen.
It was the latest gang attack on a vulnerable and impoverished community in the capital of Portau-Prince, a show of defiant force and violence that continues to overwhelm a crumbling government that requested the immediate deployment of an international armed force more than a year ago and has yet to arrive.
“A big disappointment is that the state has disappeared,” Jose Ulysse, hospital director and founder, said of the government's inability to fight gangs as he thanked police for saving people's lives on Wednesday.
He said he hopes he can reopen the hospital soon as many are left wondering why it was attacked amid speculation it could have been gangs flexing their muscles during an ongoing turf war, signaling that no one is safe.
The assault that forced the evacuation of the hospital and left dozens of homes ablaze was blamed on the Brooklyn gang. It is led by Gabriel Jean-Pierre, nicknamed “Ti Gabriel,” leader of a powerful gang alliance known as G-Pep, one of two rival coalitions in Haiti.