CROIX-DES-BOUQUETS, Haiti (AP) – A prison director was among at least eight people killed Thursday after several inmates tried to escape from a jail in the Haitian capital, a police officer and witnesses said.
The incident took place in the northeast of Port-au-Prince in the civilian prison Croix-des-Bouquets, which was built by Canada in 2012 and is known for an outbreak in 2014 in which more than 300 prisoners escaped.
Residents in the area who refused to be identified due to concerns about their safety told The Associated Press they saw a group of heavily armed men start shooting at prison guards before the prisoners began fleeing.
Shots could still be heard from the jail a few hours after the shooting began.
The police officer who confirmed the murder of the prison director to the AP, and did not want to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said the authorities were preparing to attack the prison and described the prisoners as armed and dangerous.
At the time of the outbreak in 2014, the prison was holding 899 inmates, 130 of whom were over capacity.
During Thursday’s incident, one escapee, 37-year-old Jhon Hippolyte, was shot in the back. He told the AP that he was serving a sentence for murder and was in hospital when he noticed everyone was running and decided to join them.
AP journalists saw the bodies of at least seven men along streets near the jail. They were shot. Their identities were not immediately available, and it was not clear if they were prisoners or who killed them.
In a video recorded by residents, one police officer can be seen leading a group of men together with a rope. It was not immediately clear if they were prisoners.
Authorities could not be immediately reached for comment.