Haiti school disaster death toll rises to 88

Fortin Augustin, the preacher who owns and built College La Promesse in suburban Port-au-Prince, was arrested late Saturday and charged with involuntary manslaughter, police spokesman Garry Desrosier said.

Augustin was being held at a police station in Haiti's capital, while a U.S. rescue crew searched overnight for survivors of Friday's collapse of the three-story building, which normally holds 500 students and teachers.

Grim task
In a rare moment of joy in a grim task, Haitian rescuers pulled four children alive from the rubble and cradled them in their arms Saturday as they ran toward ambulances, U.N. police spokesman Andre Leclerc said.

Leclerc said he did not know the extent of the injuries to the two girls, ages 3 and 5, and two boys, a 7-year-old and a teenager. But he added the 3-year-old had a cut on her head and seemed to be fine. "She was talking and drinking juice," Leclerc said.

Nadia Lochard, civil protection coordinator for the western region that includes Petionville, said the death toll rose to 84 on Saturday, with 150 others injured and many more still missing. Later, U.S. rescuers using digital cameras on long poles to look under the rubble found six or seven bodies, but think that two of them were already included in Lochard's death toll, said Evan Lewis, a member of a team from Fairfax County, Virginia.

In the two days of rescues, parents clutched pictures of their children as they watched rescue workers sidestep human limbs sticking out from the rubble. Riot police chased away several Haitians who found their way past police barriers and were trying to excavate the site themselves.