UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Haiti has a chance now to tackle pervasive gang violence with a U.S.-initiated international force starting to deploy and a prime minister committed to providing alternatives for young gang members, the United Nations’ expert on human rights in Haiti said Monday.
“We’re in a place now where the next few months are going to be crucial,” said William O’Neill, who visited Haiti this month. “And I think it can turn around, because the gangs, at the end of the day, are not that powerful.”
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A woman searches garbage for items to use or sell in the Tabarre neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)
A child plays at a shelter for families displaced by gang violence as he eats a meal in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)
A moto-taxi driver transports clients through the Petion-Ville area of of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)
A man walks along a deserted street where a part of the earthquake-destroyed Cathedral stands in downtown Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)
The U.N. Security Council on Sept. 30 approved a plan co-sponsored by the U.S. and Panama to authorize a much larger, 5,550-member force with expanded powers to help stop the escalating gang violence in Haiti. It is aimed at transforming a Kenya-led multinational force, which arrived in Haiti in June 2024 and grew to about 1,100 troops, into a “gang suppression force” with the power to arrest suspected gang members, which the current force does not have.
O’Neill told U.N. reporters that the support office and other elements of the gang suppressing force are already in Haiti setting up and the first troop arrivals are slated for early April, with more contingents arriving in the following months and the entire force on the ground by September. Some contingents in the Kenya-led forces are expected to stay, including from El Salvador, Guatemala and Jamaica, he said.
Gangs have grown in power since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021. They now control 90% of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and have expanded their activities into the countryside, including looting, kidnapping, sexual assaults and rape. Haiti has not had a president since the assassination. Haitian police and the U.N.-backed multinational force have struggled to quell the violence.
O’Neill urged the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions on more gang leaders and corrupt politicians and oligarchs tied to the gangs. And he said the flow of guns and other weapons primarily from the United States must be stopped because then “the gangs literally run out of bullets, and they lose their strength.”
The Haiti expert, designated by the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said he was frustrated that nearly five years after Moise’s assassination the gangs have become more and more powerful. But he said he now has “more than hope” with the arrival of the gang suppression force, and a prime minister with a Cabinet committed to delivering results for the people and especially opportunities for young people and gang members.
Right now, he said, gang leaders are on social media all the time showing off their jewelry and fancy athletic wear and bragging about what they do. “Kids see this and they say, ‘That’s how I become rich, that’s how I become a big shot.’”
But O’Neill said there’s a terrible video that came out a few weeks ago showing a gang leader with a baseball bat beating 10 or 15 young boys lying on the floor because they were suspected of trying to get out of the gang area.
He said getting rid of several gang leaders could have a major impact on tackling the violence, because others who seek money and power would get the message.
“Haiti is facing a difficult yet promising moment. If we can help Haiti address insecurity, fight corruption and impunity and protect human rights, then everyone will prosper,” O’Neill said. “We just can’t let them down.”
A woman searches garbage for items to use or sell in the Tabarre neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)
A child plays at a shelter for families displaced by gang violence as he eats a meal in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)
A moto-taxi driver transports clients through the Petion-Ville area of of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)
A man walks along a deserted street where a part of the earthquake-destroyed Cathedral stands in downtown Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)
PARK CITY, Utah (AP) — A Utah woman was convicted Monday of aggravated murder after poisoning her husband with fentanyl and self-publishing a children’s book about coping with grief.
Prosecutors say Kouri Richins slipped five times the lethal dose of the synthetic opioid into a cocktail that Eric Richins drank in March 2022 at their home outside the ski town of Park City. They say Richins was $4.5 million in debt and falsely believed that when her husband died, she would inherit his estate worth more than $4 million. They also say she was planning a future with another man she was seeing on the side.
Richins stared at the floor and took deep breaths as the judge read the verdict.
The jury deliberated for less than three hours. Afterward, family members on both sides of the case left the courtroom hugging and crying.
She was also convicted of other felony charges, including an attempted murder charge in what authorities alleged was another effort to poison her husband weeks earlier on Valentine’s Day with a fentanyl-laced sandwich that made him break out in hives and black out. Jurors also found Richins guilty of fraudulently claiming insurance benefits after his death.
Sentencing was scheduled for May 13, the day her husband would have turned 44.
“Honestly I feel like we’re all in shock. It’s been a long time coming,” said Eric Richins' sister, Amy Richin, adding that the family can now focus on honoring her brother and supporting his sons. “So just very happy that we got justice for my brother.”
Richins’ defense attorney said Eric Richins was addicted to painkillers and had asked his wife to procure opioids for him. Kouri Richins, however, told police earlier in a video that her husband had no history of illicit drug use.
“She wanted to leave Eric Richins but did not want to leave his money,” said Summit County prosecutor Brad Bloodworth.
The most serious charge — aggravated murder — carries a sentence of 25 years to life in prison.
What was scheduled to be a five-week trial was cut short last week when Richins waived her right to testify, and her legal team abruptly rested its case without calling any witnesses. Richins’ attorneys said they were confident that prosecutors did not produce enough evidence over the past three weeks to convict her of murder.
“They haven't done their job, and now they want you to make inferences based on paper-thin evidence,” defense attorney Wendy Lewis told the jury on Monday.
Prosecutors said Richins, a real estate agent focused on flipping houses, was deep in debt and planning a future with another man. She had opened numerous life insurance policies on her husband without his knowledge, with benefits totaling about $2 million, prosecutors alleged.
They showed the jury text messages between Richins and Robert Josh Grossman, the man with whom she was allegedly having an affair, in which she fantasized about leaving her husband, gaining millions in a divorce and marrying Grossman.
The internet search history from Richins’ phone included “what is a lethal.dose.of.fetanayl (sic),” “luxury prisons for the rich America” and “if someone is poisned (sic) what does it go down on the death certificate as,” a digital forensic analyst testified.
Bloodworth replayed for the jury a clip of Richins’ 911 call from the night of her husband’s death. That’s “not ‘the sound of a wife becoming a widow,’” he said, quoting the defense’s opening statement. “It’s the sound of a wife becoming a black widow.”
Lewis responded that the prosecution “looks at facts one way and sees a witch, but if you look at those facts another way, you see a widow.”
The defense focused on trying to discredit the prosecution's star witness, Carmen Lauber, a housekeeper for the family who claimed to have sold Richins fentanyl on multiple occasions.
Lewis argued Lauber did not deal fentanyl and was motivated to lie for legal protection. Lauber said in early interviews that she never dealt the synthetic opioid, but later said she did after investigators informed her that Eric Richins died of a fentanyl overdose, the defense noted.
Richins had asked Lauber for “the Michael Jackson stuff,” which Bloodworth said likely refers to the drug combination that killed the singer.
“She knows she wants it because it is lethal,” he argued.
The housekeeper was already in a drug court program as an alternative to incarceration on other charges when authorities arrested her in connection with the Richins case, investigators said. She had also violated some conditions of drug court.
The defense showed a video of law enforcement warning Lauber that they could pull her drug court deal and that she could face a lengthy prison sentence.
“Give us the details that will ensure Kouri gets convicted of murder,” a man in the video said.
Lauber was granted immunity for her cooperation in the case. She testified that she felt a need to “step up and take accountability of my part in this.”
Shortly before her arrest in May 2023, Richins self-published the book “Are You with Me?” She promoted it on local TV and radio stations, which prosecutors pointed to in arguing that Richins planned the killing and tried to cover it up.
Summit County Sheriff’s detective Jeff O’Driscoll, the lead investigator on the case, testified that Richins paid a ghostwriting company to write the book for her.
Prosecutors showed the jury excerpts of a letter found in Richins’ jail cell that they said appeared to outline testimony for her mother and brother. In the six-page letter, Richins instructed her brother to tell her former attorney that Eric Richins confided in him about getting fentanyl from Mexico and “gets high every night.”
Defense attorneys said the letter contains a fictional story Richins was working on. They argued that Eric Richins was addicted to painkillers and asked his wife to procure opioids for him.
However, Richins told police on the night of her husband's death that he had no history of illicit drug use, according to body camera footage shown in court.
Associated Press reporters Jacques Billeaud in Phoenix and Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed.
Defendant Kouri Richins, accused of poisoning her husband in March 2022, listens to closing arguments in Third District Court, Monday, March 16, 2026, in Park City, Utah. (David Jackson/Pool Photo via AP)
Judge Richard Mrazik listens to closing arguments in the Kouri Richins trial where she is accused of poisoning her husband in March 2022, in Third District Court, Monday, March 16, 2026, in Park City, Utah. (David Jackson/Pool Photo via AP)
Defendant Kouri Richins, left, accused of poisoning her husband in March 2022, listens to closing arguments in Third District Court, Monday, March 16, 2026, in Park City, Utah. (David Jackson/Pool Photo via AP)
Summit County Prosecutor Brad Bloodworth presenting the state's final arguments in the trial of Kouri Richins, accused of poisoning her husband in March 2022, Monday, March 16, 2026, in Third District Court in Park City, Utah. (David Jackson/Pool Photo via AP)
Defendant Kouri Richins, left, accused of poisoning her husband in March 2022, listens to closing arguments in Third District Court, Monday, March 16, 2026, in Park City, Utah. (David Jackson/Pool Photo via AP)
