In the middle of the day, Monday June 1, 2020, police officer Wisnick Aristil, born April 13, 1984, was killed by two bullets by unidentified gunmen, not far from the police station of Cité Soleil.
The plainclothes police officer was not on duty at the time of the events. He was on his motorbike when he was hit by two projectiles, one in the hip and the other in the head, the titular judge of Cité Soleil, Evens Levêque, told Le Nouvelliste, after legal observation of the corpse carried out by the ‘one of his assessors in a rain of bullets around 5 pm For hours, the policeman’s body was bathed in his blood. No one could approach it.
Aristil had come to collect his check for 21,312 gourdes, the newspaper learned. The check was found in his pocket. Police Commissioner Délin Boyer, head of the Cité Soleil police station, contacted by the newspaper, confirmed this homicide without going into details.
“We are trying to do what it takes to control the situation,” he told the newspaper. Justice of the Peace Levêque describes an extremely difficult situation in the city since last week. He says he heard the shots. But he was unable to go to the scene.
Reports that the newspaper cannot cross-check indicate that at least half a dozen people were killed and houses burnt down during a counterattack by men from Boston, (A neighborhood of Cite Soleil) allied with those from Bélékou.
This punitive expedition killed several people at “Soutè”, near Brooklyn. During this attack last week, people tried to flee by sea. Even today, a woman is looking for her child after the skiff used sank, explained our source, stressing that the funeral of one of the young men killed in “Sou tè” took place on Monday.
Some people have compared the situation in Cite Soleil to that of Georges Floyd, the African-American man who asphyxiated by four white police officers in Minneapolis. Residents of this vast shanty town are taken hostage by gangs who confront each other with automatic weapons, die.
Their corpses do not fit into any statistics, nor does their slum fire. Often, the corpses of victims are carried away, said the mayor of Cité Soleil Jean HislainFrédérick. Continue reading.