An American couple is being held for ransom in Haiti a week after being kidnapped from a bus.
Jean Dickens Toussaint and his wife, Abigail Toussaint of Tamarac, Florida, were visiting family members in Haiti when they were kidnapped while traveling on a bus from Port-au-Prince on March 18.
A family friend who met the couple at the airport and escorted them on the bus was also kidnapped, their niece, Christie, told ABC Miami affiliate WPLG.
“They stopped the bus at a stop and they asked for the Americans on the bus and their escorts to come off the bus and then they took them,” Christie said.
The Toussaints, both 33, haven’t been heard from since they were forced off the bus at gunpoint.
Their fellow church members at First Haitian Baptist Church of Pompano Beach created a Change.org petition asking for support and prayers. The petition generated nearly 1,500 signatures.
Jean and Abigail, both 33, have a son who will turn 2 next week. The child was not with them when they were abducted. A family member told Local 10 News they paid the ransom demand of $6,000 to release the couple. But the ransom was increased to $400,000.
“Once we sent that money, they tried to up the price to $200,000 per person and we don’t have that type of money,” she said.
“We were very worried when they said they were going, we told them not to go but they wanted to go,” another relative, Nikese Toussaint said.
The State Department told The Daily Beast it is aware of the kidnappings in Haiti but declined to share details. “When a U.S. citizen is missing, we work closely with local authorities as they carry out their search efforts, and we share information with families however we can,” a spokesperson said.
Last year, a Haitian gang kidnapped 17 missionaries working with an Ohio Christian nonprofit. The gang demanded $1 million ransom to release the missionaries, who were later freed unharmed.
The State Department issued a travel advisory warning Americans not to travel to Haiti “due to kidnapping, crime, and civil unrest.”
