“I am alive, thanks to God,” Martine Moise said in an audio message posted on her official Twitter account three days after her husband was shot dead in their home.
“I am alive but I have lost my husband Jovenel,” she added.
According to Haitian authorities, an armed commando of 28 men — 26 Colombians and two Haitian-Americans — burst in and opened fire on the couple in their home.
So far, 17 have been arrested, and at least three were killed. A handful remain at large, police say. No motive has been made public.
“In the blink of an eye, the mercenaries entered my home and riddled my husband with bullets … without even giving him a chance to say a word,” Martine Moise said in her audio message.
“I am crying, it is true, but we cannot let the country lose its way,” she said. “We cannot let his blood… have been spilled in vain.”
Her husband’s killing has plunged already troubled Haiti — the poorest country in the Americas — into chaos.
Amid deep uncertainty over its political future, the international community has called on the impoverished Caribbean country to go ahead with the presidential and legislative elections slated for later this year.
“I will not abandon you,” Martine Moise said.
She promised to engage in a direct exchange with Haitians on Facebook “in the near future.”
