20113: (Chamberlain) Marines kill speeding driver at checkpoint (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By PETER PRENGAMAN

   PORT-AU-PRINCE, March 9 (AP) -- U.S. Marines shot and killed the driver
of a vehicle speeding toward a military checkpoint, a spokesman told The
Associated Press on Tuesday, the second reported fatality at the hands of
the peacekeepers.
   A passenger in the car also was wounded in the Monday night shooting,
said the spokesman, Sgt. Timothy Edwards, in a telephone interview.
   "When you see a vehicle approaching at high speed it is seen as a
threat, so the Marines opened fire," Edwards said. "The driver was killed.
... A second man was injured and turned over to the Haitian police."
   Marines said they shot and killed gunman who fired at them during a
demonstration Sunday that left seven dead and more than 30 wounded.
   Also on Tuesday, militants demanding the return of ousted President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide threw rocks and set barricades of tires ablaze,
blocking a main road in the capital and threatening renewed turmoil as
officials gathered to pick a new prime minister.
   Edwards said the body of the driver killed Monday night was turned over
to the Red Cross.
   But a body remained near the checkpoint area on Port-au-Prince's main
road on Tuesday morning, and a man who said his cousin had been shot and
killed by Marines identified it as that of Mutial Telusma.
   The cousin, Jean-Claude Batiste, said Telusma had picked up his brother,
Sedelin Telusma, from his work at the airport around 8 p.m. and was driving
home at high speed, which is normal in Haiti.
   "The road was blocked and he didn't know, just kept going and he was
shot," Batiste told the AP, recounting the story from Sedelin Telusma, who
was being treated for two gunshot wounds.