By Melanie Eversley

A police officer in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, was fatally shot while trying to stop a kidnapping on Saturday, the same day that gangs took 17 missionaries hostage as they made their way home from an orphanage.

Armed bandits were trying to kidnap criminology Prof. Patrick Derenoncourt of the State University of Haiti when Officer Pierre Richard and other police officers came on the scene, The Haitian Times reported. In a gunfire exchange, Richard died, another officer was injured and the bandits made away with Derenoncourt as their hostage, according to the Times. 

Gang members made off with 16 American missionaries and one Canadian missionary in a community east of Port-au-Prince, the capital.