Five Haitian Family members die in Car Crash in Long Island NY on Sunday

New York State Police said Sunday they are investigating whether speeding could have caused the fiery car crash that killed five family members -- including a woman and her three children -- on the Southern State Parkway as they returned home from a gathering in Brentwood.

Police also are determining whether alcohol might have played a role in the Saturday night single-car crash that killed driver Myriam Lebrun, 37, her mother, Marie Rose Yolande Moise, 68, and her three children, Marquis Jeanty, 14, Marcel Jeanty, 9, and Kayla Jeanty, 8, all of Brooklyn.

"It looks like a combination of speed, and we're investigating the possibility of alcohol," lead State Police investigator Charles Knapp said Sunday.

n's 1998 Honda Accord veered off the roadway in North Babylon and crashed into a tree shortly before 11 p.m. Saturday, erupting into flames on impact, police said.

Relatives at the party told investigators that Lebrun didn't eat, but had a few drinks during the night, Knapp said. The relatives said they didn't think she was intoxicated, he said.

Other relatives who didn't attend the gathering said Sunday Lebrun would not have put her family at risk.

"She was health-conscious. She doesn't smoke, she eats healthy. She cares about her life," said Mayerline Moise, 26, a cousin who lives in Hempstead. She called Lebrun "a very safe driver."

Christine Moise, 20, another cousin, also of Hempstead, said, "She wouldn't endanger her family. She just wouldn't."

A witness told State Police that she saw the headlights of Lebrun's car speeding up behind her as she drove west on the parkway near Exit 38, adjacent to Belmont Lake State Park, according to a police report. That witness reported that Lebrun's vehicle passed her at a speed of more than 60 mph, then immediately went into the woods, according to the report. The speed limit is 55 mph.

Another witness reported seeing the Honda speeding and weaving on the parkway, police said. Detectives are awaiting toxicology reports, which can take several weeks to complete.

The impact caused the car to shear in half. Lebrun and Marquis, who sat in the front passenger seat, were both wearing seat belts, according to the police report. Moise and Kayla were ejected from the rear of the car. That part of the vehicle was too badly damaged for investigators to determine if they had been wearing seat belts, police said.

Lebrun's father, Jean Lebrun, sat on his daughter's porch sobbing Sunday as he processed the loss of his child, grandchildren and ex-wife.

"What can I do? This is a part of life and I have to deal with it. I have to survive," Jean Lebrun, 72, said through an interpreter.

He last saw his daughter two weeks ago.

"We just talked," he said.

Other family members who spoke from a home on Ormond Street in Hempstead where they had gathered said Lebrun had been studying at Kingsborough Community College for a job in a health-related field.

Marquis adored basketball, Marcel had an artistic streak, and Kayla was a "little runway diva" who "could play dress-up all day," Christine Moise said.

Yolande Moise's brother, Eustache Moise, 64, of West Hempstead, said he found out about the deaths while watching a television newscast early Sunday.

"I'm trying to hang on, that's all I can do," he said.

Myriam Lebrun moved from Haiti to Eustache Moise's home in Hempstead in 1994, family members said. She lived there until 2002.

When first responders arrived at the crash scene about 11 p.m. Saturday, the flames from the vehicle were 10 to 15 feet high, North Babylon First Assistant Fire Chief Robert Cabano said.

"The front of the car was pretty much engulfed in flames," he said. "There was a lot of trauma to the vehicle."

It took firefighters about 15 minutes to put out the fire, which Cabano said was confined to the front of the car. The westbound parkway was closed for several hours after the crash, reopening about 3:30 a.m., police said.

Among the broken glass and tree branches at the crash site Sunday was a child's shirt with cat designs on it, children's shoes and a pair of high heels.

Edmond Edouazin, a friend of the Moise family from Haiti, photographed the wreckage -- the tree split in half, its bark charred.

Edouazin, 54, of Huntington, said he was lifelong friends with the family from "the old country," and he considered them family.

"We're still trying to figure out what happened," Edouazin said.

"They're devastated," he said of the families. "It's too much emotion."

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11 escapees caught in Dominican Republic - Haiti Libre

Following the escape Sunday, August 10 of 329 inmates from the maximum security prison of Croix-des-Bouquets, located 13km north-east of Port-au-Prince and 44.9 kilometers from the Dominican border http://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-11795-haiti-security-329-escapees-the-government-explains-video.html Dominican army forces captured on the night of Wednesday to Thursday Lodo H. Cele, 25, one of the 329 escapees on the run, in a village near the border town of Duvergé, 217 km east of Santo Domingo.

Admiral Sigfrido Pared, the Dominican Minister of Defence indicated that it was the 11th escapee captured by the Dominicans after the joint operation with the National Police of Haiti last Tuesday, which resulted in the capture in the Dominican Republic of Clifford Brandt and 3 other escapeeshttp://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-11804-haiti-security-it-s-the-dominican-army-that-captured-clifford-brandt.htmlhttp://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-11803-haiti-flash-end-of-the-run-for-clifford-brandt-update-5-48-pm.html However, he did not say if the 11 escapees were part or not of the 19 fugitives announced by the Haitian authorities.

Furthermore, Admiral revealed Friday that the Dominican forces had proceeded Thursday evening at the arrest of 55 Haitians who were trying to enter the Dominican Republic in a village near the border town of Jimani, 282 km east of the Dominican capital. Admiral Pared indicated that investigations were underway with the Haitian authorities, in order to confirm the eventual presence of escapees in this group of people "We will only give names after verification..."

Note that since this important evasion and according to information from Major General Paulino Sem Rubén Darío, 6,000 soldiers equipped with advanced technologies, with intelligence support, special rapid response units and adequate transportation equipment were deployed at the border to prevent these escapees, whose many of whom are classified as dangerous, dnd refuge in the Dominican Republic.

Aristide summoned in money laundering case

August 15 2014 at 11:41am

Supporters of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide clashed with U.N. peacekeepers Thursday as the popular former leader faced possible arrest for not providing court-ordered testimony in a criminal investigation.
About 150 Haitians had erected barricades of stones and burning tires outside Aristide's home in Port-au-Prince to prevent any attempt to arrest him, keeping traffic at bay along the busy street largely without incident much of the day.
But some demonstrators pelted an SUV carrying U.N. personnel with stones, forcing the occupants to flee into a nearby home. They were subsequently rescued by peacekeeping troops, who then cleared the protesters and their barricades using tear gas and armored vehicles.
The source of the tension was a summons issued by investigating magistrate Lamarre Belizaire for testimony from Aristide, whose ouster in February 2004 amid a violent rebellion triggered the deployment of a U.N. peacekeeping force that has been in the country ever since.
Belizaire issued the summons ordering Aristide to appear in court Wednesday. A copy of the order obtained by The Associated Press says the case involves allegations of laundering drug money but does not provide details.
Aristide lawyer Mario Joseph said the former president never received the summons at his home, where he has largely lived a secluded life behind high walls since he returned in March 2011 from exile in South Africa. The lawyer showed up at the court at the appointed time after hearing media reports about the hearing and brought a letter explaining why the summons should not be considered properly served.
The judge himself did not show up at the hearing and he could not be reached for comment. Under Haitian law, the judge could issue an order requiring police to take Aristide into custody for questioning, but it was not known whether he did so.
Joseph said he had been unable to reach the judge to clarify the situation. The lawyer said the summons was not properly served on the former president and thus he could not be legally taken into custody as a result.
Aristide remains a polarizing figure in Haiti. He is popular among a large segment of the population and his supporters allege that the criminal investigation is part of a campaign to keep the party that he founded, Fanmi Lavalas, from trying to build support ahead of legislative elections expected by the end of the year.
"The judge is a political judge," Joseph said. "He is an opponent of Fanmi Lavalas. All this is an act to block Fanmi Lavalas from taking part in the election."

Basic police work led to arrest of Haiti prison escapee, more remain at large - Miami Herald

LINE CHARLES
JCHARLES@MIAMIHERALD.COM

The arrest of a high-profile alleged kidnapper from Haiti’s prison break offer a glimmer of hope, but confusion and questions about what happened still remain.

When Esau Marcellus arrived in a remote rural market near the Haitian-Dominican border to pick up an escaped fugitive early this week, the Haitian National Police inspector was happy with his catch.

But little did he know that the prized catch — alleged kidnapping kingpin Clifford Brandt — was only a few phone calls, and mere hours away. Marcellus’ quick thinking led to the capture of Brandt, the country’s most-wanted fugitive who was among 329 inmates to escape a Port-au-Prince prison a few days before.

Marcellus was making the rounds early Tuesday at the Savane Bombe market, spreading the word to shoppers and merchants about Sunday’s prison break when residents told him of several suspicious-looking men who had recently passed through the area.

He quickly dialed several informants to ask if they had seen strangers lurking around the rugged, barren frontier.

“They told me they saw three suspicious individuals,” he told the Miami Herald. “I asked them to describe them. They said, ‘One was light-skinned and the others were black.’ I told them to follow them to see where they are going. Finally, they reported back they were headed in the direction of the Dominican Republic.”

Still unaware of who the men were, Marcellus warned another informant on the Dominican side to be on the look out, and to ask Dominican soldiers to detain the men.

Brandt and his traveling companions were arrested by a Dominican Army patrol assigned to the Cacique Enriquillo post around 11:30 a.m. Tuesday. But it would be hours before they or even Marcellus realized exactly who it was they had in custody.

Arriving at the border post with a justice of the peace, two other police officers and the prisoner he had picked up that morning, Marcellus got out of his vehicle, stepped into the holding cell and asked the men to identify themselves.

“He didn’t hesitate,” said Marcellus, 49. “He said, ‘My name is Clifford Brandt.’”

Haiti’s Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe has congratulated Marcellus, a 19-year-veteran of the police force, on a job well-done while acknowledging that cooperation over the arrest signal a new chapter in the relationship between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

“A lot of people doubted that we would arrive at this result that we have today,” Lamothe said about Brandt, who was flown back to Port-au-Prince. “We knew the results would be positive. But we are not yet satisfied. We will be satisfied when we have re-caught every escapee.”

The arrest of Brandt, the best-known fugitive from Sunday’s prison break, has provided a glimmer of hope amid an embarrassing episode for Haiti’s government.

But confusion and questions over the prison break remain as hundreds of other criminals, including possible Colombian drug traffickers, remain at large and the public still has no idea who they are, or what they look like.

“We are focusing on Brandt, but there are others, dangerous criminals, drug traffickers who also escaped,” said Pierre Esperance, the head of Haiti’s National Network for the Defense of Human Rights (RNNDH).

And while some, including Haiti’s police, believe the goal of the prison break was to free Brandt, his disheveled appearance and the manner in which he was captured has raised questions about whether he was the real mastermind, or simply took advantage of an opportunity to run after 22 months in pretrial detention inside the overcrowded jail.

This week, Lamothe called for Haiti’s prisons to be reinforced with cameras and for every detainee to be fashioned with an electronic bracelet. He has also called for a deepening of the investigation into the prison escape and the submission of a daily report on the arrest of escapees.

“This escape has hit all of us,” he said, appealing to Haitians for support and understanding. “We will all put our hands together, put our determination together to get everyone who escaped.”

Esperance said while he welcomes the government’s determination, an example needs to be set to prevent a repeat of Sunday’s episode.

“Over the years, you always have prison guards who from time to time organize escapes, but sanctions are never taken against them,” Esperance said. “They are never judged. Reinforcing the security measures is fine, but what needs to be done today, what is important, is that sanctions have to be applied against all the prison guards who were involved. Justice needs to do its job.”

Esperance said his group believes the prison break was an inside job and that Brandt left the facility with at least a dozen other prisoners about an hour-and-half before the mayhem that allowed hundreds of other prisoners to escape happened.

“What we at RNNDH know is that in the moment that Brandt was leaving the prison, there was no fight,” he said. “It was like a door opened and Brandt and a dozen other people walked out.”

Details of the incident are as murky as Brandt’s life on the run.

A police officer at the scene told the Herald that it was only after shots were heard that officers at the nearby Croix-des-Bouquets police station realized something was wrong. It was the officers, he said, who stopped many more of the 899 prisoners from escaping.

“Guns were distributed inside the prison; who distributed we don’t know but they were not from the guards,” the officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the incident. “The prisoners had 9 mm, even an M-4. This was something that was planned a long time ago from the inside.”

Police back-up from other Port-au-Prince stations, the officer said, didn’t arrive until two hours later.

Haitian authorities have removed the head of the Croix-des-Bouquet police station — whose officers arrived too late to prevent the prisoners from escaping — despite lauding the efforts of police.

For his part, police inspector Marcellus said he was simply doing his job.

“When you are a police officer,” he said, “you can’t be a coward.”

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American Airlines to expand its flights to Cap-Haitien - by Haitiantreasures.com

CAP-HAITIEN ABOUT TO WELCOME LARGER AIRCRAFT

What many people have been waiting for a long time is about to happen in Haiti's countryside. The expansion of international flights to the North will soon allow passengers from Miami to go directly to the city of King Henri Christophe. Beginning October 2, 2014, the giant North-American carrier American Airlines will provide daily nonstop service to Cap-Haïtien, one of Haiti's best tourist destinations.

According to Minister of Tourism, Stephanie B. Villedrouin, "In terms of tourism, the North has long been the historical capital by excellence! With this new access to the outside world, the success of this destination is guaranteed."  As a matter of fact 30 to 35 percent of American Airlines' Haiti-bound passengers traveling from JFK, Miami International and Fort-Lauderdale currently transit in Port-au-Prince before heading to Cap-Haitien.

"Considering the North region's potentiality in terms of attractions, such as the amazing Citadelle Laferriere the biggest fortress of the Americas, the ruins of Sans-Souci Palace, Royal Caribbean’s private beach in Labadee, Cormier Beach, Vertières, Bréda, the historical city of Cap-Haitien is a major location standpoint for the revival of tourism in the country", added Stephanie Villedrouin.

The Cathedral Notre-Dame of Cap-Haitien in front of La Place d'Armes

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Excerpt from Haiti's Hidden Treasures Part II, documentary showcasing Haiti's incredible landscape and history

Financed by the government of Venezuela and equipped with security materials provided by the US government, the newly renovated Cap-Haitien Airport now called the Hugo Chávez International Airport with a 7,500-foot runway will be ready to welcome the first major American flight to Cap-Haitien through a brand new terminal. In the past 10 years, this airport has already accommodated some international flights from Miami, Orlando and the Caribbean. In October 2012, former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and her husband, visited the area aboard a modified 757 large aircraft to attend the Caracol industrial park’s opening.

Pierre Chauvet, CEO of Citadelle Travel Agency in Port-au-Prince and former president of the Tourist Association of Haiti welcomed the arrival of American Airlines in Haiti’s second largest city, stating that will be a gate opener to Florida market and will definitely boost tourism in the North. Others said that it's a great deal for the city of Cap-Haitien and neighboring regions, the economy, and the diaspora. Still, Haitiantravelers are complaining about the airline-ticket prices, which they would like to see dropping to facilitate the return of more visitor

Polo: Haiti raises first Championship Trophy in History

SAN FRANCISCO, USA (sentinel.ht) - In the 1920's and 30's, Haiti was known for holding, and having the best in its territory for polo matches. Providing the ideal tropical climate, a friendly native population welcome travelers from all over the world, who docked in its ports to enjoy the best foods, culture, entertainment and sport.

But in these times, since these times, Haiti had never fielded a national team of its own. It was a game described as "the sport of kings", a nation born of slaves who revolted, it seemed implausible to play... but as we know through Haitian history, in the heart of the enslaved can be the heart of a king, that can become king.

Team Haiti raises Championship trophy after defeating the United States 6-2 in the PoloSF and Audi Sportscar Experience International Tournament in San Francisco, CA [Reed Davis]

It is yet still remarkable that the history-making participation of the first Haitian team, in an official international tournament (USPA, et al recognized), would perform so well and in the end, hold up the championship trophy.

Box score results

Team	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	Final
United States	0	1	0	1	2
Haiti	1	2	2	1	6

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Team Haiti was challenged by teams with long-standing records, reputations, on its way to the championship, but Panama, China and the defending international world champions, Argentina, could not stop what seemed in retrospect, a charging locomotive.

Team Haiti [Reed Davis]

Haiti Team Captain Claude-Alix Bertrand described Sunday’s events as “serendipitous… everything was working in our way.” Jessie Diaz, the Secretary of State for Tourism in Haiti made the opening toss that was quickly engaged by Bertrand and led to a first score for the Haitian team in less than 30 seconds. “You can tell [the Americans] were just struck by then.”

The United States offered a very impressive defensive front, but it seemed a confused offensive attack, struck by an early goal, would culminate in an unraveling 6-2 defeat. Haiti became the Champions of the inaugural, POLOSF, Inc. and Audi Sportscar Experience International Polo Tournament in San Francisco that Sunday.

The impressive run of the Haitian squad now places it in the rankings of the world’s polo associations, opening the country for participation in tournaments throughout the world and year-round.

Despite a final score of 6-2, the U.S. defense kept the Haiti team, which scored 8 against a strong Argentina squad, to only 6 but two scoreless opening chukkers, in the first and third, would relegate them to runner’s up in the tournament.

There was more good news to come, with dozens of ladies in hats at Sunday’s match, Secretary Diaz’s red head wear won her top showing in the hat competition.