21467: (Chamberlain) Student killed, Bahamas pulls out (later story) (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By MICHELLE FAUL

   PORT-AU-PRINCE, April 21 (AP) -- A stampede at a police academy
recruiting drive killed one person and injured 23 others in Haiti,
officials said Wednesday.
   Police fired tear gas and beat back applicants with batons as thousands
of job hunters rushed the academy on Tuesday, crashing through the gates
and past French guards. U.S. Marines helped to control the crowd by
blocking the academy entrance with Humvees.
   Meanwhile, the Bahamas withdrew its diplomats from Haiti, following the
shooting and robbery of its ambassador's wife and a threatening telephone
call to the wife of a second diplomat, a government spokesman on Wednesday
told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
   During the stampede, Jerry Prophete, 23, fell and was trampled to death,
said Police Commissioner Jean-Yonel Trecile, who said 23 others were
injured and eight were hospitalized.
   "The crowd got so big that the police couldn't control the situation,"
Jean-Pierre Benjamin, 25, said Wednesday as he recovered at a hospital in
suburban Petionville. "The gates broke open and people started falling. I
fell and others stepped on me."
   As many as 4,000 applicants showed up for the first day of the
recruiting drive on Monday. The numbers swelled to as many as 15,000 people
on Tuesday, Trecile said.
   Trecile said police had not anticipated the turnout, but said the job
hunters were partly to blame. "At one point they went wild," he said.
   He said some officers from the riot squad on Monday were taking bribes
to allow would-be recruits through the gates of the academy. Trecile said
police were investigating.
   Most of the impoverished Caribbean country's 8 million people are
without jobs and live on less than $1 a day.
   The police recruiting drive has been postponed until Monday, when
applicants will be divided among three locations and by the first letter of
their last names.
   Haiti's interim government began the drive to replenish a depleted force
that fled before a rebel advance in February. Hundreds have deserted, some
fearing reprisal attacks because of their loyalties to ousted President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
   Some 150 officers were fired last week for abandoning their posts and
ethics violations by a U.S.-backed interim government backed by a U.S.-led
multinational force.
   The Bahamas is the only Caribbean country with an embassy in Haiti.
Foreign Affairs Minister Fred Mitchell told the Bahamian Parliament on
Wednesday that the government did not believe the shooting was politically
motivated.
   But a Caribbean diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he
understood the Bahamas was investigating whether the two incidents were
related and connected to the bad relations between Haiti's U.S.-backed
interim government and the 15-nation Caribbean Community that has refused
to recognize it.
   Francoise Newry, wife of Ambassador Eugene Newry, was shot and robbed of
her handbag at a market near the downtown presidential palace on Saturday.
That night, Michelle Williams, wife of the embassy's second secretary,
received a threatening telephone call.
   Mrs. Newry underwent surgery that day in Nassau, the Bahamian capital,
where a bullet was removed from her left buttock, the spokesman said.