As Haiti's gang-induced humanitarian crisis deepened in October, a group of looters ransacked a supermarket in a well-to-do suburb of the capital Port-au-Prince, leading police to arrest over a dozen people and take them to a nearby police station.
Within hours, the station in the area known as Thomassin came under a hail of bullets from gang members led by a man named Carlo Petithomme, whose brother had been among those arrested, according to two security sources.
Most gangs first emerged in the slums near the capital, but residents and merchants left those areas in response, said James Boyard, a security expert and professor of international relations at the State University of Haiti. The last major foreign military force in Haiti, a 13-year U.N. mission known as MINUSTAH, was deeply unpopular by the time it ended in 2017 due to credible evidence that its troops caused a 2010 cholera epidemic as well as accusations of sexual abuse of under aged girls.
In 2021, when gangs took control of the main road heading from Port-au-Prince to Haiti's southern peninsula, drivers began taking Laboule as an alternate route.The group began getting attention when a police officer was killed in an anti-gang operation in January in Laboule 12. Local media reported that Ti Makak was responsible.
The business has now sharply curtailed its activities due to months of threats as well as the overall situation of the country, said the entrepreneur.