The widow of Haiti's assassinated President Jovenel Moïse told The New York Times she is seriously considering running in a bid to replace him.
In a story posted Friday by the newspaper, Martine Moïse, who was badly wounded in the attack, said she first has to undergo additional surgeries on her arm.
The Times noted she has had two surgeries already. Now doctors plan to implant nerves from her feet in her arm. She can only move two fingers in her right hand.
But she said: "President Jovenel had a vision and we Haitians are not going to let that die."
President Moïse was killed on July 7 in an attack on his private residence. At least 19 suspects have been arrested in the ongoing investigation. The Associated Press reported the nation's economic, political, and social woes had deepened before the assassination. Gang violence had surged in Port-au-Prince, while inflation spiraled and food and fuel became scarcer at times.
In the interview with the Times, Moïse recounted the horrific events of the night of the murder.
She recalled her husband telling her to get down on the floor when the assassins entered the house.
"That's where I think you will be safe," he told her.
Moments later a burst of gunfire came through the room. She was the first to be hit with her elbow shattered as her mouth filled with blood.
"The only thing that I saw before they killed him were their boots," Moïse said. "Then I closed my eyes, and I didn't see anything else."
With her husband dead on the floor next to her, she listened as the assassins tore apart the room, while searching his files.
"'That's not it. That's not it,'" she recalled them saying in Spanish. Then one finally said: "'That's it.'"
As the killers left the room, one stepped on her feet, while another put a flashlight to her eyes in an apparent attempt to make sure she was dead.
"When they left, they thought I was dead," she said.
"At this moment, I felt that I was suffocating because there was blood in my mouth, and I couldn't breathe. In my mind, everybody was dead, because if the president could die, everybody else could have died too."
She now wants to know who ordered and paid for the murder of her husband. She is convinced a mastermind was behind the assassination.
Jeffrey Rodack ✉
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.
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