Luciana Nogueira felt relieved when she first saw the army. “Calm down my love, it’s the Army,” said the wife of musician Evaldo Rosa dos Santos after the first blast of gunshots struck her family’s car in a military area in Rio de Janeiro’s west zone around 2 pm on Sunday, April 7. Evaldo didn’t respond because he had been struck by the gunfire. He died the same day.
“When we saw someone from the police or Army, we were thinking that they were there to protect us, help us.” Luciana said these words between long breaths to a military judge. Her hands trembled as she cried between each response.
Widow Luciana was one of eight people who testified Tuesday (21) in Rio de Janeiro. The following people also testified: The father-in-law, a friend of the couple (who was also in the vehicle), the widow of the trash collector Luciano Macedo, who died 11 days afterward, and four other people who were present during the tragedy.
The 12 military defendants, who will testify another day, accompanied the court hearing by video in a separate room. Nine of them are being held in preventive jail, and they are waiting for the Superior Military Court (STM) to release them during the court case.
The sequence of events told by the people at the hearing corroborates the complaint that Evaldo’s car did not resist. There were two rounds of shots fired, one of which happened when Evaldo’s car had already stopped.
According to the Military Public Ministry, the members of the army fired 257 shots from a rifle and shotgun, of which 62 hit the car of the family. At this moment, they likely confused the musician’s white car with a vehicle used by criminals in an assault that had happened minutes earlier.
Paul Henrique de Mello, the lawyer for the defendants, said that the denouncement was premature and it is still missing information to come to a conclusion.
Translated by Kiratiana Freelon