President Leonel Fernández expressed his regrets to President Rene Preval of Haiti for the tragic death of six Haitians in El Copey, Monte Cristi. Minister of Foreign Relations Eduardo Latorre, also notified his counterpart, Minister of Foreign Relations Fritz Longchamp, and lamented the tragic outcome of a military pursuit. Both guaranteed the Haitian government that the military would be tried with the full force of the law in the case they violated the laws. News reports indicate that the Haitians, and one Dominican, died when the truck in which they were transported at around 3 am on Sunday was pursued by a frontier patrol that ordered to stop by a frontier patrol and did not heed the command until overturning some 23 kilometers later. Dr. Bolivar Garcia, director of the Department of Pathology of the Cabral y Baez said that the results of the autopsies will be known in a few days and are part of in-depth investigation ordered by the Dominican government. El Caribe newspaper reports that the cadavers of the six dead Haitians were received by a commission head by Haitian charge d’affairs Andres Danton. He declined commenting until the investigation results are known. Minister of the Armed Forces, Lieutenant General Manuel de Jesus Florentino y Florentino appointed a high-ranking commission to investigate the matter. The Armed Forces in a preliminary report said that the patrol was on an intelligence mission and fired at the truck because of intelligence sources had indicated the truck was transporting cocaine from Haiti. The Armed Forces said that the truck driver did not heed their calls to stop. The chauffeur of the truck, Felix Núñez Peña and the Army (DOIF) patrol were sent to Santo Domingo for investigations. The Attorney General of the Nation said that if the armed forces investigation does not fill expectations, that judicial body would order a parallel investigation to get to the bottom of the matter.
