Another Rio horror story

Fresh back in Rio from Recife today.... I picked up a Rio news magazine in the airport, which was all about another sickening death of yet another innocent little 6-year-old boy at the hands of 16- and 17-year-old Rio criminals. This sort of thing seems to happen all the time here. The little 5- and 6-year-old kids seem especially likely to suffer. They're old enough that they might be a bit separated from their parents - sitting in a different car seat, for example - but are so young that they aren't alert enough or quick enough to recognize a crime in progress and dash out of harm's way.

This was a nasty one. Stop reading here if you have a weak stomach, or if you have a 6-year-old of your own.

It started as a perfectly ordinary carjacking, which happens dozens of times a day in Rio. A mother, the 6-year-old boy, 13-year-old sister, and a family friend were all in a car. Bandits charged at the car with guns and ordered everybody out. The mother, sister and friend jumped out, but the 6-year-old was not quite quick enough. He got halfway out of the back seat - his mom tried to help him - he got tangled in the seatbelt - and the bandits slammed the door and took off at top speed, dragging the poor little kid, who was hanging from his waist from the seatbelt, outside the car, hanging by the back wheel.

The poor mother and sister saw him being dragged away, and screamed, but the car wouldn't stop.

The thieves dragged the kid 7 kilometers, through 4 neighborhoods. Past bars where dozens of people watched in shock, at first thinking there was some kind of doll or clothing attached to the car; then everybody noticing the bloody trail it was leaving, and everybody screaming, and running after the car. But the car wouldn't stop. A motorcyclist followed almost the whole way - he'd been behind the car at the very beginning and had given chase the entire way, honking his horn and flashing his lights - until at last he managed to get up to the drivers' window to yell at them to stop, but they shoved a gun in his face, and he had to give up; and they wouldn't stop.

Witnesses said the car was doing did zig-zags to try to shake the little kid free. They knew he was there. They knew what they were doing.

The kid died, of course. The car was spattered with blood by the time they finally parked the car - in the same place where they had parked the previous 4 cars that they'd carjacked. They just jumped out, glanced at the little body that was still hanging by the rear wheel, which was so shredded by now that it was missing head, fingers and knees (police had to gather body parts from along the 7-km stretch of road). Witnesses said the thieves just glanced at the body and went on with their routine search of the car. Turns out they didn't even want the car - just purses, cds, and whatever other odd items they could get. Veja magazine referred to this as the "terrifying banality of violence in Rio today."

What kind of city can do this to a little kid?

What happened to those 16- and 17-year-olds to turn them into the kind of people who would do this to a little kid?

On top of the other recent violence, this has struck a very raw nerve for the Rio citizens. The O Globo newspaper website set its all-time record for the most emails received about a news story (2500 in half a day - and this in a country where most people do not have email access). Many of the emails were from people who said they had not been able to stop crying about it.

It is the cover story this week for Brazil's major weekly newsmagazine Veja, with the headline "And one more time, are we going to do nothing?"


PS: A week after publishing this post I got an anonymous comment complaining that as a self-professed "expert in Brazil" I should have done my research better, in that, a similar incident occurred in Kansas City a few years ago and that this sort of thing happens in US cities too. First off - I've never said, and certainly don't think, that I'm an expert on Brazil. I've only been here a little while and have seen a very small window into Brazilian life. This is a personal blog where I share some of my personal experiences and impressions for my friends and family; nothing more. Second, I never have said these things don't happen in US cities too. Of course they do. But they happen much more frequently here, to a degree that I have not personally experienced before, and to a degree that clearly also frightens and appalls the local Brazilians. And third, if you'd like to leave a comment, please leave your name and email; I don't publish anonymous comments. Thanks!