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Yahoo! News   Thu, Apr 22, 2004
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AP
1 Killed in Haiti Police Academy Stampede
Wed Apr 21, 6:23 PM ET

By MICHELLE FAUL, Associated Press Writer

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - A stampede at a police academy recruiting drive killed one person and injured 23 others in Haiti, officials said Wednesday.

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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.


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