Jonah Engle

Haiti Correspondent

Article originally published in the Haitian Times, September 22, 2009.

The Collier County Sheriff’s Office is seeking the return from Haiti of Mesac Damas, a North Naples Florida resident whose wife and five children were murdered last week.

On Tuesday morning the Sheriff’s Office issued a warrant for his arrest and charged him with six counts of premeditated murder.

“We’d like to have him back today,” said Sheriff Kevin Rambosk as three detectives headed to Haiti. Frantz Lerebour, the Haitian National Police’s spokesperson, said Damas, who is a U.S. citizen, could be extradited to Haiti as early as today.

Damas is in the custody of the Haitian Judicial Police who arrested him yesterday in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Clercine. Damas has been questioned by Haitian police and while details of the interrogation have not been made public, the Sheriff’s office said statements he made contributed to their decision to charge him with the murders. The Sheriff’s office said U.S. agents had also questioned him, but Lerebour said Damas had only been questioned by Haitian Police.

The bodies of Guerline Damas, 32, and her three sons and two daughters aged between 11 months and 9 years old, were discovered Saturday evening in their home by Collier County Detectives.

Damas’ car was recovered at the Miami International airport from where he is thought to have flown to Haiti on Friday morning. Sheriff Rambosk said he had obtained a warrant to search the car and thought the final autopsy could come by the end of the week.

Damas told the Associated Press that he had planned to surrender and gone back to Haiti to say goodbye to relatives, something the sheriff’s office disputed.

The relationship between Guerline and Mesac had been a violent one. In January, he was arrested after hitting his wife, forcing her to drop their baby. In 2005, a judged granted Guerline a protective order, but several days later she requested it be lifted.

Georges Huguens Dieu, one of Guerline’s brothers was at the police station yesterday where Mesac Damas was being held. Carrying pictures of his sister, he wished she’d listened to her family who told her to leave her husband, “she was always having trouble with Mesac,” he said.