Haiti: Petithomme led gang causes chaos in Thomassin

As Haiti's gang-induced humanitarian crisis deepened in October, a group of looters ransacked a supermarket in a well-to-do suburb of the capital, Port-au-Prince, leading police to arrest over a dozen people and take them to a nearby police station.

However, they were not there for long.

Within hours, the station in the area known as Thomassin came under a hail of bullets from gang members led by a man named Carlo Petithomme, whose brother had been among those arrested, according to two security sources.

Petithomme goes by the alias Ti Makak and leads a gang of the same name.

Reuters quoted sources as saying they overpowered officers and released the looters as well as others who had previously been arrested.

For security reasons, Reuters was unable to contact Petithomme.

The brazen Oct. 10 assault, which is reported in detail for the first time here, shocked residents of an area that had been largely shielded from Haitian gangs, a group of which have created a humanitarian crisis by blocking fuel distribution.