Florida man dies during Haiti home invasion

PORT-AU-PRINCE — An American citizen who worked for the Department of Homeland Security has been shot to death during a home invasion, his friends and officials said Sunday.

Ronald Chery, a Haitian-American who worked as a fraud officer in the Miami DHS office, died during the robbery on Friday, said a spokesman for MINUSTAH, the UN-backed international police force in the country.

Chery was on a personal visit to a home in Petionville, one of the wealthier and safer suburbs of the country’s impoverished capital.

The U.S. State Department issued a travel warning in June to people visiting Haiti. At least two American citizens have been shot and killed this year while traveling in cars near the country’s main airport.

Details of Friday’s robbery were unclear. The Haitian National Police are in charge of the investigation and do not have publicly available reports on the case.

Parnell Duverger, a friend of Chery and a professor at Broward College in Florida, said a group of men arrived at Chery’s family home on Friday and the housekeeper allowed them inside.

Chery tried talking to the men, Duverger said, and was shot.