The Rev. Jean Cassamajor, pastor of Bethesda First Haitian Baptist Church in Austell, has tried to get his daughter out of Port-au-Prince for years.

Today, though, his efforts have become more urgent as a surge in gang violence has forced thousands to leave the Caribbean nation’s capital, and left many others frightened and hunkered down in their homes or wherever they can find refuge.

His 31-year-old daughter, a doctor, is unable to leave her home for fear of roving gangs. That means not going to the market for food or not going to her job at a local hospital.

He’s worried that if the gangs find out she’s a physician or that she has a father in the United States that she might be kidnapped or held for a ransom and “ask for money that you do not have.”

When she calls me I just say, ‘hello?’ and hold my breath until she says, ‘Hi, Dad.’ It’s going to take a miracle for her to come right now.”

The nation has been hit hard by relentless gang violence, the worst, some say, in decades. There have been kidnappings, murders and armed raids on pharmacies and hospitals. The violence has largely been in the capital city.

Others areas appear to be relatively safe, say Haitian Americans here.

Haiti, considered the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, has endured turmoil and trouble since it’s independence from France in 1804. It has experienced a litany of setbacks including foreign intervention and occupation, successful and unsuccessful coup attempts, presidential assassinations, depletion of natural resources, corrupt government, natural disasters, and now a surge in gang violence in its capital city Port-au-Prince.

A transitional council has been formed to pave the way for new leadership and to address spiraling violence and a looming humanitarian crisis.

The U.S. State Department has a level 4 warning, the highest available, against traveling to Haiti.

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