About a month after Prime Minister Ariel Henry was installed in July, scores of residents started asking him to resign because they found out he was allegedly involved in President Jovenel Moïse's assassination. (Ricardo ARDUENGO / Reuters)

PORT-AU-PRINCE — As scores of state officials have done before him, Prime Minister Ariel Henry planned to travel to the Pont Rouge monument on Oct. 17 to lay a wreath of flowers for the commemoration of Jean-Jacques Dessalines’s assassination. It was to be a simple gesture Haitians have unanimously recognized with fanfare and good tidings to honor the assassinated revolutionary hero. 

But as Henry traveled to the event on the morning of Oct. 17 for the 215th commemoration, he and his entourage heard gunshots, forcing the prime minister to turn around and abandon the wreath laying. An armed gang that goes by Force Revolution G9 Family & Allies reportedly fired the gunshots, but their leader Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier rejected the allegation.

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Email me at onz@haitiantimes.com
Onz Chery is a Haiti correspondent for The Haitian Times. Chery started his journalism career as a City College of New York student with The Campus. He later wrote for First Touch, local soccer leagues in New York and Elite Sports New York before joining The Haitian Times in 2019.