How a US Sailor Went Missing in Haiti

First, a cop went missing. Then, a cache of rifles issued by the Haitian national police vanished. Then, the gregarious hotel manager charged with safeguarding the weapons was ambushed while driving on a Port-au-Prince street.

His bullet-riddled gray car was later found at a nearby police station.

The mysterious disappearances are now the target of two investigations, one by the Haiti National Police and the other by the FBI, which is trying to unravel what some Haiti sources believe may be a cover-up with links to rogue police forces.

At the heart of the mystery is the missing hotel manager, Patrice Miot Jacquet. A dual Haitian-U.S. citizen and former U.S. Navy serviceman, he’s a one-time resident of Fort Lauderdale.

Jacquet worked at various South Florida hotels before taking a job in his native Haiti in 2014 as the director at one of the country’s high-end hotels, and vanished in December without a trace after witnesses claimed they saw him being detained by Haiti National police officers and placed in a police vehicle. At the time, Jacquet was engaged in several side jobs, including serving as logistics manager for a private U.S.-based security contractor, Studebaker Group, that was quietly hired last fall by the Haitian government to help rein in armed gangs.

Jacquet, 52, went missing on Dec. 16, just days after a Haitian police officer, also working with Studebaker, vanished. The cop, Steeve Duroseau, who went by the name “Carl,” was Jacquet’s cousin, and his sudden unexplained absence rattled the hotel manager.

Jacquet learned of his cousin’s disappearance, a relative said, after discovering that his own armored BMW had been broken into at his home and the weapons he had inside the vehicle had been stolen.

Even more puzzling is that Jacquet’s groundskeeper reportedly identified Duroseau as being part of a group behind the weapons theft when he called to alert Jacquet about the police visit. Though a full accounting of what exactly was stolen hasn’t been made public, there were at least nine police-issued rifles that were taken, a source told the Miami Herald. They were given to Studebaker after their contractors, some of whom are ex-special forces, began arriving in Port-au-Prince in September and were being kept inside a safe house in the upscale Vivy Mitchell neighborhood in the Pétion-Ville suburb.

People dressed in Haitian police uniforms went to the Vivy Mitchell house and demanded access. One of them identified himself as Duroseau, the groundskeeper said. Whether it was actually the police office remains in question, a source told the Herald on condition of anonymity because of safety concerns.

After the weapons theft, Jacquet reportedly received a phone call to set up a meeting.

Investigation Stalled

Who called and whether Jacquet agreed to the meeting are unanswered questions. But as he was driving through Vivy Mitchell’s wealthy enclave of gated homes, swimming pools and luxury apartments, Jacquet’s vehicle was hit by a hail of gunfire. A female passenger was critically injured during the ambush but survived.

Jacquet was then seen being placed in a police vehicle, according to a separate investigation. He has not been heard from since.

“He is believed to have been kidnapped,” reads a public Facebook post circulating among Jacquet’s friends and family, describing him as 5’7″ and weighing 186 pounds. “But no proof of life or ransom demands have been made.”

Relatives said they repeatedly tried to get in touch with the State Department, the FBI and Haitian authorities to ask them to take Jacquet’s disappearance seriously, but were ignored. As recent as a month ago, a relative said she reached out to the Haitian police and was told, “We’ve never heard of this case.”

If the response seems odd, it should be.

Soon after Jacquet was ambushed on the streets, concerned friends in Haiti talked to the FBI, providing a contact for his son in the U.S. One of them said Haitian police had attempted to interview the woman passenger in Jacquet’s car.

“He was not doing anything illegal. He’s not a terrorist,” said the frustrated family member over the handling of Jacquet’s disappearance. “Somebody is going to have to start talking at some point.”

The FBI referred questions about Jacquet to the U.S. Embassy in Haiti and the State Department.

A State Department spokesperson said the agency is aware of reports of a missing U.S. citizen in Haiti, but added that due to privacy considerations, “We do not have any further information to share at this time…. When a U.S. citizen is missing, we work closely with local authorities as they carry out their search efforts, and we make every effort to keep lines of communication open with families as appropriate.”

Initially treated as just another missing-persons case in a country where kidnappings are common and people vanish nearly every day, the disappearance is now getting more scrutiny amid fears in some of the highest corners of the current administration that it may have been part of some kind of cover-up and purge of witnesses.

“An investigation is actually under way and a person has been arrested,” Justice Minister Patrick Pélissier told the Herald.

The arrested person, another source told the Herald, is the groundskeeper, whose identity has not been made public.

Haitian Police Called

Jacquet met the security contractors after they arrived in Port-au-Prince. He helped them get housing and assisted them with maneuvering through Port-au-Prince’s traffic-jammed streets as they worked with the head of the police and the prime minister at the time, Garry Conille, to train cops to go after armed gangs.

Like others, Studebaker’s contractors are concerned about the whereabouts of Jacquet, who was described as well-liked and personable and had previously been kidnapped in his homeland..

Forced to abruptly abandon its training mission in Haiti after Conille was fired by Haiti’s ruling presidential council in November, Studebaker Group said in a statement that “all defensive equipment utilized during our authorized training and advisory mission with the Haitian national police … was fully accounted for, secured in locked containers, and formally transferred to designated” Haitian police prior to the team’s departure from Haiti.

“Coordination regarding equipment custody and the formal exit process was directly communicated by our task force to the director general of the Haitian national police,” the statement continued.

A spokesperson for Haiti National Police chief, Rameau Normil, did not respond to a request for comment. Last week, the judicial police unit, which is in charge of investigations, summoned two people working out of the National Palace for questioning about the case. The two, a police officer and civilian, are part of a new joint task force working with another private security firm that has been using weaponized drones to flush out gang leaders.

Two Haitian government sources, including one who has been independently looking into Jacquet’s disappearance and a police ring that may be connected to it, said they find the summons odd. The investigator said his own digging showed no signs that any of the people summoned were part of the group of cops working with Jacquet or Studebaker, or would know that guns were left behind. His own investigation has pointed to the possibility that others were aware of the weapons and in the mayhem of the political upheaval decided to grab them.

Before he disappeared, Jacquet told several people he expected to get an intelligence-gathering job in the incoming Haitian government. A government official acknowledged they often spoke of the need for a strong intelligence unit in Haiti to root out gangs and criminality. Now some are wondering if that, or his other ties, could have made him a target.

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