We publish an unofficial translation of an article by A Nova Democracia (AND) from Brazil.
RJ: Residents riot after police prevent help for 13-year-old boy shot dead
Colleagues from Kauã protest in front of the school against the unjust death of the boy by the police. Photo Marcelo Tavares
Friends and family members protested in Itaboraí after Kauã Mendonça Ferreira, 13, was shot in the leg during a raid by military police in the Jardim Imperial neighbourhood on his way from school on 3 August. According to his friends and family, the police not only refused to help him, but also prevented family members from rescuing him. The boy's uncle was also shot and is in serious condition.
Friends of the boy protested on 04.08 in front of the school the boy went to, Escola Municipal Professora Marly Cid Almeida de Abreu, and from where he was shot a few metres away. At the demonstration, the children shouted "Police kill residents" and held up placards with photos and phrases about the young man.
His girlfriend Talia dos Santos denounced police violence in an interview with the reactionary press monopoly G1: "You mean to say that they want to defend us, protect us, by shooting?" The young woman also said that Kauã had his whole life ahead of him.
Family members and friends also spoke out on the day of his funeral at Porto das Caixas cemetery on 5 August.
Colleagues from Kauã carry out an action at the cemetery. Photo: Marcelo Tavares
Police let Kauã die in agony
According to his best friend's report, police officers left Kauã to die in agony from his gunshot wound to the leg. He was with Kauã at the time of the murder and pleaded with the reactionary military officers to be allowed to help the boy.
According to the reports, the boy was leaving the school with a backpack on his back and was about to fly a kite when the police arrived shooting. Other youths ran away while Kauã was shot.
A local resident, who did not want to be identified, said, "My daughter's father-in-law [Kauã's uncle] wanted to put him in the car to take him to the hospital, but the police wouldn't let him." Lucas da Conceição de Souza, 25, uncle of the teenager, tried to help his nephew and was also shot. He is in serious condition at the Alberto Torres state hospital in the intensive care unit in São Gonçalo.
Kauã was in the ninth grade of primary school, the school he had attended since he was six years old. He lived in the Jardim Imperial neighbourhood with his great-grandmother, who was 92 years old and could not cope with the death of her great-grandson.
Blood on the hands of the old state
Kauã's relatives bury the young man. Photo: Marcelo Tavares
The military police of the state of Rio de Janeiro, subordinate to the genocidal governor Cláudio Castro and the reactionary Brazilian army, carried out a raid on the community that morning just as the children were leaving school. This creates all the necessary and basic conditions for the so-called "stray bullets" to find the "right targets" for the ruling classes: Poor people, black people and slum dwellers.
In the case of Kauã, the young man would certainly have survived if he had been helped, and the police not only did not help him, they prevented them from doing so. The same thing happened in several favelas across the state and especially in the capital, where it is the rule (not the "exception") in punitive expeditions that injured residents are not attended to and bodies are not collected.
In Cláudio Castro's term alone, there have already been 330 deaths in 74 police operations. In absolute numbers, RJ leads the way in killings by police. In 2020, 1,245 people were killed by police officers on and off duty. In 2019, 1,814 people were killed by police in the state.
