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The elder Mr. Lloyd, who had just left Haiti a day earlier to return to the United States, said he last spoke to his son \u201cright in the middle of it all.\u201d <\/span>His son had been struck on the head with a pistol and was trying to calm the situation, Mr. Lloyd said.<\/p>\n\u201cOne group came in, tied him up, beat him and stole my trucks and loaded them up with everything they could,\u201d Mr. Lloyd told The Times in a telephone interview from Oklahoma.<\/p>\n
His son managed to untie himself as neighbors tried to help.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then all of a sudden another group pulls up and that\u2019s where things got foggy,\u201d Mr. Lloyd said. \u201cI was talking to him when that next group pulled up. And he was telling me that he got hit in the head by a pistol. He\u2019s like, \u2018I\u2019ve got to go now. There\u2019s a bunch of them here again.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Lloyd said he wasn\u2019t sure what happened next, but that witnesses told him that one of the organization\u2019s security guards may have fired his weapon.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomebody got nervous and somebody got shot, so they felt like it was my son\u2019s fault,\u201d Mr. Lloyd said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The incident was being chronicled in real-time on Facebook, with Mr. Lloyd and his wife recounting that they were trying to rescue everyone and negotiate with the gangs. Then the phone lines went silent, and they posted an update that three of them had been killed.<\/p>\n
The victim\u2019s parents described their son as a devout Christian dedicated to Haiti.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy son grew up in Haiti. It was his whole life,\u201d the victim\u2019s mother, Alicia Lloyd, said in an interview. \u201cAll he wanted to do was go back to Haiti and help people.\u201d<\/p>\n
After attending the Ozark Bible Institute and College in Missouri \u2014 the same Pentecostal college his father attended \u2014 Mr. Lloyd III chose to return to Haiti, his parents said.<\/p>\n
The younger Mr. Lloyd would tell girls he\u2019d meet: \u201c\u2018Don\u2019t talk to me if you are not interested in living in Haiti for the rest of your life\u2019,\u201d Mr. Lloyd Jr. said. \u201cHe said he loved Haiti, and that was his heart.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even as most Americans working in Port-au-Prince were evacuated by the U.S. Embassy in March after a gang assault on the city that shut down the airport, the younger Lloyds chose to stay. The Port-au-Prince airport reopened this week after being closed for months. They still stayed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Mr. Lloyd said he told his son he could fly home for a break on Wednesday after the airport reopened, but he declined the offer.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe just had a heart for the Haitian people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Mr. Montis, the pastor, had been with the organization for 20 years. \u201dOne of the best guys you will ever meet,\u201d Mr. Lloyd said.<\/p>\n
The older Mr. Lloyd said they had frequent dealings with gang leaders, who respected their work.<\/p>\n
Despite the scourge of killings in recent months, he said it had been relatively peaceful in the area in the past few weeks. He even fed gang members regularly with bread from the organization\u2019s bakery, he said, adding that it was customary to have to pay them to get through roadblocks.<\/p>\n
Gang leaders, he said, told him: \u201c\u2018We appreciate you helping the people.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s why we felt safe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Haiti has been gripped by a wide-scale gang assault since February, when several gangs that normally fight each other decided to band together and fight the government. Hospitals, government buildings, police stations and prisons were attacked, and thousands of prisoners were released.<\/p>\n
The crisis forced the resignation of Haiti\u2019s prime minister, Ariel Henry, who was out of the country at the time and unable to return. A transitional council was named to run the flailing government while the United States helped organize a deployment of police and soldiers from several countries, led by Kenya, to fight the gangs. That mission is expected to arrive in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n