1 killed, 3 wounded in Haiti amid violent protests

1 killed, 3 wounded in Haiti amid violent protests
Associated Press / Dieu Nalio Chery

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) _ One police officer was killed and three people were wounded in Haiti on Monday amid a second day of countrywide protests over allegations of government corruption.

Two of the wounded were foreigners who were hurt by gunfire.

One of those was a 29-year-old French woman who was riding with her boyfriend and a Haitian-American tourist from the Port-au-Prince airport to a popular beach club about two hours away.

Her name is Marion Bobin, 29, said her boyfriend, Francis Eugene, who explained the incident to The Associated Press.

Eugene, 27, said the Haitian-American tourist and the driver were also wounded.

He said a group of armed men tried to stop an airport shuttle operated by the club about a half-hour before it arrived at its destination and opened fire when it refused to stop.

It wasn’t immediately clear how seriously the tourists and driver were hurt.

Demonstrators were calling for the president to resign for not investigating allegations of corruption in the previous government over a Venezuelan subsidized energy program, Petrocaribe.

Haitian police said earlier in the day that one of their officers had been killed by a street gang in the capital.

Police spokesman Gary Derosier told the AP that the officer was riding in a motorcycle taxi that was stopped at a roadblock run by a street gang, who fatally shot him and burned his body in an alley.

Schools were closed and most other activities around the country were stopped Monday, a day after six died in clashes between protesters and police.

Demonstrators were calling for the president to resign for not investigating allegations of corruption in the previous government over a Venezuelan subsidized energy program, Petrocaribe.