Brazilian Police Implicated in Killing of Teen Robbery Suspect

Brazilian authorities are investigating two police officers in last month’s killing of a 14-year-old boy in Rio de Janeiro, public safety officials said Tuesday.

The cops were taken into custody after the appearance this week of a video that implicates them in the murder.

The video, which was released on Sunday by Globo, shows two Rio de Janeiro state police officers capturing two teenagers suspected of robbery and a third teen who was at the scene observing what happened.

According to the images, recorded on June 11, the police placed the robbery suspects in the trunk of their vehicle and transported them to Morro do Sumare, a mountain located in the Tijuca forest, in the city of Rio de Janeiro.

Once they had reached the summit of the hill, the video is interrupted for 10 minutes and the recording resumes once again with the police officers already inside their vehicle and the teens are gone.

Minutes later, one of the young men appears on the highway and the two officers offer to give him a ride at the same time that they threaten him and tell him not to tell anyone what happened.

“If there is any rumor here in the Uruguaiana (a popular street market in Rio de Janeiro) that you came up here with us, we’re going to come after you. Are you listening?” one of the officers says to the boy on the recording.

Five days after the images were recorded, one of the three boys, Mateus Alves de Santos, 14, was found dead at the top of Morro do Sumare.

The second boy, 15, was shot once in the back and once in the knee, but he survived and gave a statement to the police, while the third – who was given a ride by the officers – is being sought by the authorities.

Published in Latino Daily News