Slain Haitian President’s Security Was Lax, Neighbors Say

Neighbor Philogene Charles, 40 years old, said Mr. Moïse’s presence had given a sense of calm to the city’s Pelerin 5 district, where upscale mansions share a hillside with crowded slums. Suspicions and theories have flourished about the killing, including that it was an inside job and not a hit by foreign mercenaries, as the government officials have said.

“Nobody other than the president and his wife has a scratch on them. How can that be?” said Ms. Charles.

Haiti’s police chief, Leon Charles, has said that close to 30 foreign mercenaries were involved in the attack. Haiti officials say security forces killed at least three suspected assailants and arrested 18 Colombians and two Haitian-Americans believed to be involved.

The threat of violence has intensified since the assassination. Jimmy Cherisier, a former police officer known as “Barbecue” who leads the ruthless G9 group of gangs, called on his supporters to seek justice for Mr. Moïse. In a video recording released over the weekend, Mr. Cherisier urged his countrymen to rise up against “the stinky bourgeoisies” and foreign businessmen who he claimed were behind the president’s murder.

The death has triggered a succession controversy. For now, Mr. Moïse’s acting-prime minister, Claude Joseph, has taken over de facto control of the government. Other say Ariel Henry, a neurosurgeon who had been named by the late president to become prime minister just days before his murder, should be in charge.

The National Police have been trying to keep order. On Saturday, they said all public demonstrations were prohibited under martial law. Port-au-Prince residents, still struggling to make sense of Mr. Moïse’s assassination, try to carry on amid growing doubts about who was behind his brazen killing.

People like Kenton Simon, 30, manager of a beauty salon, are now thinking about leaving the country because of surging violence and economic deprivation. “I don’t even know who’s running this country right now,” Mr. Simon said.

While violence intensified and gangs tightened their control over large parts of the country’s capital, demand for bodyguards and private security contractors rose over the past year, residents and foreign executives living in Haiti say.

In the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country, Mr. Moïse’s neighborhood is seen as upscale, yet it is lined by gated multifamily homes. A garbage-strewn stream flows under a narrow driveway that leads to the turquoise gate at the entrance of the slain leader’s residence. On the unpaved road outside, middle-class neighbors walk around freely while their barefooted children play with discarded plastic bottles.

In Bogotá, Colombian military and government officials are now trying to determine what role, if any, the former soldiers had in the assassination.

At least two relatives of the elite jungle fighters from the Colombian army who have been linked by Haitian authorities to the president’s killing say the men were hired as bodyguards to protect wealthy Haitians and that they hadn’t been deployed to kill anyone. Many former members of Colombia’s military, seen as seasoned after a half-century guerrilla conflict, are contracted by security companies world-wide.

Among the three suspects killed was Duberney Capador, 40, a retired Colombian army sergeant who spent two decades in counterinsurgency operations. Jenny Capador, 37, said her older brother had been contacted in April by a former colleague of his who hired him to provide security for wealthy Haitians.

With a monthly salary of $2,700, it was an appealing job opportunity for Mr. Capador. “I can assure that my brother is innocent,” Ms. Capador said.

Colombian authorities say Mr. Capador left Bogotá in early May and had already been in Haiti for nearly two months by the time of the president’s murder. Ms. Capador said her brother had kept in touch regularly, and sent her text messages through much of the day of the assassination.

The messages came just hours before he was killed in a shootout not far from Mr. Moïse’s residence, as Haitian security forces hunted down the suspects.

Ms. Capador was told by her brother that he and several Colombian co-workers were holed up in a home and surrounded by Haitian security forces. She received texts from her brother at 6:30 a.m. Thursday, saying the situation was complicated and that he and his colleagues had arrived too late to the president’s house.

He told her they were being shot at while they were trying to negotiate.

“He wrote: They are shooting at us. They are attacking us,” Ms. Capador said in a phone interview from Colombia. He sent his last message at 5:51 p.m. that day.

In a recent photo provided by the family, Mr. Capador can be seen wearing a black uniform embroidered with the logo of CTU Security, a Florida-based provider of security equipment and logistical support, including bodyguards, drivers and transportation. The company didn’t respond to calls seeking comment.

The wife of Francisco Uribe, another Colombian security contractor who was captured after the president’s assassination, told Colombian radio on Saturday that Mr. Uribe was recruited by CTU Security.

Haitian authorities said that ordinary citizens helped round up some of the suspects, most of whom were captured Thursday afternoon.

The growth of Haiti’s criminal gangs worries its next door neighbor, said Roberto Alvarez, the foreign minister of the Dominican Republic, which shares an island with Haiti. “There are more than ten gangs whose members are armed to the teeth, with more powerful weapons than the police, who dare not enter some areas,” Mr. Alvarez said in an interview.

On the night that Mr. Moïse was killed, Ms. Charles, the neighbor, said she thought that the commotion just feet away from her home came from neighbors watching a soccer match. But she said a drone was hovering over the president’s home as intermittent gunfire erupted, lasting nearly two hours. Ms. Charles said she heard a loud explosion, leading her and her family to fear it was a gang gunbattle.

Ms. Charles, who is unemployed and supports her two children with remittances sent from relatives in the U.S., said she had never wanted to leave her country. But after a presidential assassination on her street, she is worried that violence in Haiti is about to worsen.

“Now, the first opportunity I get, I’m out of here.”

—Jenny Carolina González in Bogotá and José de Córdoba in Mexico City

Write to Kejal Vyas at kejal.vyas@wsj.com