National Police chief, Major General Manuel Castro Castillo, once again returned to Santiago to meet with the team investigating the death of a 23-year old undocumented Haitian immigrant, Jean Claude Harry, whose body was found bound hand and foot, hanging from a tree in Ercilia Pepin park opposite the Jose Maria Cabral and Baez hospital.
Castro Castillo was in Santiago last week when he visited the scene. This time, when leaving the meeting he refused to answer questions.
However, a police source said that he was interested in establishing exactly what happened so that any doubts or conjecture could be cleared up. Local police spokesman Colonel Damian Arias Matos had originally said that the incident was nothing to do with racism and that they were looking for two men who had been seen with the victim the night before the body was found. Earlier reports suggested that he was hanged by two of his compatriots who stole his gambling winnings (“Pale”) obtained earlier that day.
The Police are now saying that Harry was hanged by two fellow Haitians who robbed him of the money that he had been paid by one of them, Annerys Massiel Nunez, to move furniture that had been stolen from the house of Nunez’s sister-in-law, an elderly woman who Nunez and the other unnamed Haitian are said to have murdered, to Nunez’s house. The Police say he may have been murdered to prevent him from informing on the murder or revealing the whereabouts of the furniture.
The international media has been reporting the case as a racist incident against Haitian immigrants in the Dominican Republic.
http://www.elcaribe.com.do/2015/02/17/apre
http://www.listindiario.com/la-republica/2015/2/16/356586/Jefe-PN-pendiente-de-pesquisa-sobre-muerte-de-haitiano