Video: 'From the archives: Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier flees Haiti'

(Friday, February 7, 1986, 3:27 a.m. EST) — Haitian President-for-Life Jean-Claude Duvalier, known as “Baby Doc,” boarded a United States Air Force jet and fled to France before dawn today, ending the 28-year grip of his family on the impoverished Caribbean nation.

In a videotaped message broadcast after he had been in the air several hours, Duvalier said he had stepped down after two months of tumultuous anti-Government protests to spare the nation of six million people a “nightmare of blood.”

Moments later, Lieut. Gen. Henri Namphy, the commander of the armed forces, went on the air to announce that the army had taken over. He said he had acted with Haiti nearly paralyzed and the “specter of civil war” rising.