The judge of the 1st Criminal Court of Belford Roxo of the Court of Justice of Rio de Janeiro (TJRJ), Luís Gustavo Vasques, accepted the complaint of the Public Ministry of the State of Rio de Janeiro (MPRJ) and made eight defendants accused of involvement in the deaths, in December 2020, of the boys Alexandre da Silva, 10 years old, Lucas Matheus da Silva, 8 years old, and Fernando Henrique Ribeiro Soares, 11 years old, in Comunidade do Castelar, in Belford Roxo, Baixada Fluminense.
The complaint indicated that the boys were tortured for having stolen a bird from the community. According to the MPRJ, because of the torture, one of them died on the spot. The other two boys were murdered. Despite searches by the Civil Police and Firefighters in rivers in the community, the bodies were never found.
In the decision, the magistrate decreed the preventive detention of seven accused. One of the defendants, who responds for hiding a corpse, will comply with precautionary measures.
“It is verified that it remains evident not only by the intense gravity of the crimes imputed to the mentioned defendants, which, without a doubt, in itself already causes social unrest, demanding more and more the adoption of a rigid posture on the part of the constituted authorities in the sense to restore social peace, but also by modus operandi developed, revealing the high dangerousness of the agents to endanger society as a whole”, pointed out the judge.
Almost a year after the disappearance of the boys, on December 27, 2020, investigations of the inquiry carried out by the Homicide Police Station of Baixada Fluminense (DHBF), indicated that Lucas, Alexandre and Fernando Henrique were killed by community traffickers with authorization from a head of faction that controls the sale of drugs in the region. The reason would be an alleged theft of a bird cage by the children. At the time, security camera footage shows the boys for the last time, close to a free fair in the region.
According to the investigation by the Civil Police, the head of the faction in the Castelar Community was not informed that they were boys when he received the manager’s request for authorization of the crime. With the repercussions on the disappearance of the boys, the drug dealer pointed out for the murder was killed by burning files in the Conjunto de Favelas da Penha, in the north zone, so as not to affect the other members of the group.
