26 to 30 April 1963 · Haitianspan
A family is machine gunned and burned because of a surname
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Duvalier decided that the shots at the College Bird had been fired by Lieutenant Francois Benoit, a former rifle team champion who was at that moment sheltering inside the Dominican embassy. Militiamen drove to the Benoit house in Bois-Verna and opened fire as they arrived, killing his elderly father, a retired judge, along with his mother and a friend on the porch. They killed the servants and the dogs, poured kerosene over the house and set it alight. Benoit's baby son died in his cot. An elderly lawyer named Benoit Armand was killed for carrying the name. Troops then entered the Dominican chancery, the first violation of a foreign mission in Haiti since 1915. Juan Bosch massed three thousand soldiers at Dajabon, sent an ultimatum and invoked the Rio Treaty, and an American amphibious brigade was ordered to the Gulf of La Gonave. Duvalier broke relations with Bosch and welcomed the Trujillo family and their policemen to Port-au-Prince the same afternoon.
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