Engineer killed outside Haiti relocation camp
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Gunmen killed an engineer supervising the building of shelters at a relocation camp for Haitian earthquake survivors, forcing construction to be suspended on part of the site, the International Organization for Migration said Saturday.
The body of 42-year-old Pierre Richard Denis was found Friday on the outskirts of the quake-ravaged capital near the Corail-Cesselesse relocation camp, apparently several hours after he was shot, IOM country spokesman Leonard Doyle told The Associated Press.
Denis was returning to work aboard a group taxi around 3:30 p.m. after cashing his first monthly paycheck when he was shot twice. Haitian police investigating the murder suspect the motive was robbery. A police report said the group taxi, known as a "tap-tap," was followed by unknown assailants aboard a motorcycle after Denis left a bank in Port-au-Prince.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}There have been no arrests made in the case.
"It was a despicable act against a talented and hardworking IOM staff member totally dedicated to helping the earthquake victims and their families," IOM Director General William Lacy Swing said in an e-mailed statement.
It is not clear if Denis, a Haitian national, was visibly identifiable as a staffer with the international organization. Some colleagues said he was wearing an IOM cap at the time, Doyle said.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The camp at Corail was chosen by the Haitian government as its first official relocation space months after the Jan. 12 quake. Placed on a parcel of government-seized former sugarcane land larger than Manhattan it is home to about 7,000 people, most relocated from the Petionville Club golf-course camp in the devastated Delmas section of the capital.
The area was billed as a refuge from the golf course's flood-prone slopes, but was criticized by Oxfam and other aid groups for being too remote. The AP found the selected site belonged to a Haitian company whose president headed the government committee that chose it.
Since then Corail's ShelterBox tents have been repeatedly battered by storms. Damage from a Sept. 24 blast of wind and rain prompted the immediate relocation of 110 families within the camp to more durable wood-and-metal transitional shelters Denis was helping to build. IOM is suspending work at the site where Denis was supervising in the wake of the shooting.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Denis leaves a wife and two children aged 8 and 11 years, IOM officials said.