20112: Esser: Marines Kill Driver at Haiti Checkpoint (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. E s s e r <torx@joimail.com>

Associated Press

Mar. 9, 2004

Marines Kill Driver at Haiti Checkpoint

By PETER PRENGAMAN
Associated Press Writer
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti

U.S. Marines shot and killed the driver of a vehicle speeding up to a
military checkpoint, spokesman Sgt. Timothy Edwards told The
Associated Press on Tuesday.

A passenger in the car was wounded in Monday night's shooting. It was
the second reported fatality by the peacekeepers.

Marines said they shot an armed man who fired at Marines on Sunday
during an attack on a demonstration of foes of ousted President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide that left seven dead and more than 30 wounded.

"When you see a vehicle approaching at high speed it is seen as a
threat, so the Marines opened fire," Edwards said in a telephone
interview. "The driver was killed. ... A second man was injured and
turned over to the Haitian police."

Edwards said the driver's body was turned over to the International
Committee of the Red Cross.

But a body remained near the checkpoint area on Port-au-Prince's main
Delmas 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 international airport at
around 8 p.m. local time and was driving home at high speed, which is
normal in these dangerous times in Haiti.

"The road was blocked and he didn't know, just kept going and he was
shot," Batiste told the AP, saying he had gotten the story from the
wounded Sedelin Telusma, who was being treated for two gunshot wounds.

Spokesman Col. Charles Gurganus said Monday the Marines could not
identify the man who was shot Sunday, did not know where his body was
and did not have his weapon, which he said had been snatched by
someone.

"He had a gun and he was shooting at Marines," Gurganus told
reporters who asked how they knew the man was a gunman.

The violence was the worst bloodshed since Aristide fled a monthlong
rebellion Feb. 29. It prompted the first armed action by the Marines
and led both opponents and supporters of Aristide to threaten their
own armed action, damaging efforts to reach a frail peace.
.