Six Haitians and a Dominican died as a result of a borderline road chase between a people-smuggler and a frontier patrol. A yellow Daihatsu truck transporting 30 illegal Haitians attempting to migrate to the DR tried to elude persecution by staff of the Destacamentos Operativos de Inteligencia Fronteriza (DOIF). Eight other illegal Haitians are injured and 14 others were arrested, according to a report in Hoy newspaper. Other news reports say that several Haitians on the truck fled when the truck capsized. News reports say none of the Haitians had any legal documents on them, which is not unusual for indigent Haitians. In Haiti there is a resistance to taking out identity papers due to the distrust of anything government-related. The truck overturned around 3 am on Sunday, some 23 kilometers after the driver was ordered to halt by the DOIF patrol. The DOIF patrols the frontier for weapon, drug trafficking and people-smuggling operations. The director of the Department of Migration, Danilo Díaz criticized the DOIF operation, saying that the shooting was an excess, that the DOIF patrols have orders to not exercise violence. The patrol fired at the tires of the truck in order to force it to stop. Autopsies were ordered to ascertain if the bullets caused any of the deaths. El Siglo says that official sources indicate that the DOIF officers thought the truck carried drug contraband when the driver stepped on the gas instead of stopping despite repeated orders to do so, as he sped through different frontier check points. 23-year old Dominican Máximo Ruben Espinal, who was one of the dead, was an assistant to the chauffeur, Felix Antonio Núñez Peña. Núñez, a known illegal Haitian-smuggler, was uninjured, and was arrested. Reportedly, those on board the ill-fated trip to the DR had paid RD$500-RD$1,000 to make the crossing and be trucked to a non-frontier city. The DOIF is a mixed force made up of officers of the Armed Forces, Drug Control Department (DNCD) and the Departments of Migration and Customs. The incident is being investigated by the Chief of the Army, Major General José Elías Valdez Bautista; chief of the department of intelligence of the Armed Forces, Brigade General José Antonio Ramírez Ferreira; by the chief of the Army intelligence deparmtent, Colonel Espinal Almanzar, and by Colonel Paulino Sem, coordinator of the DOIF force who flew to the frontier by helicopter yesterday to start the investigations. Hoy newspaper interviewed a Haitian woman in the Santiago Cabral y Baez hospital, who identified herself as Mumosa Plopel, and said that when the military ordered the truck driver to stop, the chauffeur "kept speeding, speeding, speeding and didn’t stop." The military took the dead and the injured Haitians to the Santiago Cabral y Báez public hospital.
