Brazil robbers flee with human shields on their vehicles

Published on : 09/01/2021 – 18:04

During the night of Sunday 29th to Monday 30th August, the center of Araçatuba, a town of 200,000 inhabitants located 500 km northwest of São Paulo, was raided for nearly two hours by criminals. The group, made up of a dozen men armed with rifles, robbed two of the three bank branches that were attacked. The amount of their loot has not yet been disclosed.

The images of their flight were particularly shared in the Brazilian press and on social networks: some of them show civilians attached to vehicles like human shields, to prevent the police from firing.

Explosives previously positioned in the city

According to the spokesperson for the São Paulo Military Police quoted by several Brazilian media, the criminals monitored the police intervention with drones and had previously positioned explosives in several places in the city to delay the arrival of the police. A man who was cycling through the neighborhood was leg amputee after being injured by one of these explosives.

Two other residents, men of 34 and 38, died. In the local press, the father of the first, Marcio Victor Possa da Silva, believes that his son was executed for failing to hang on to the hood of one of the cars used by the attackers. The second was hit by gunfire from the attackers as he tried to take pictures of the attack.

The body of a third man, belonging to the criminal group, was found in one of the vehicles used in the leak, according to the daily Folha de São Paulo.

For the organization Brazilian Forum for Public Security, this attack is the most violent of the type for two years in the state of São Paulo.

Arrests in progress

In a tweet on Monday August 30, São Paulo Governor João Doria announced the arrest of two criminals and the deployment of 380 police officers to find the fugitives. “The scenes of terror experienced by the population of Araçatuba will not go unpunished,” he declared. Three other men suspected of having participated in the attack were arrested the next day.

After 24 hours of work, the military police finished their work of locating the explosives scattered on the public highway: in total, 98 machines have been identified and rendered unusable.