Military police officers Diego Pereira Leal and Aslan Wagner Ribeiro de Faria accused of killing the boy Thiago Menezes Flausino, aged 13, during an approach in Cidade de Deus, in Rio de Janeiro, will be tried by the popular jury next Tuesday (27). The session is scheduled for 1 pm, at the State Court of Justice.
The young man was murdered on August 7, 2023, on the back of a motorcycle on the main access road to Cidade de Deus. He was hit by three shots. Thiago was not carrying weapons and there was no confrontation with the police at the time he was shot. There are scenes of the young man being executed, even after being immobilized.
The two police officers accused of the crime were part of the Rio PM Shock Battalion. They admitted shooting the young man. They are accused of murder and procedural fraud. In an attempt to justify the shooting, the police manipulated the crime scene and planted a weapon to support the version of confrontation.
Before the trial session, family, friends and human rights organizations promote an act to denounce the case and police violence in Rio’s favelas. Amnesty International supports the demonstration.
“I won’t have my son anymore, but I want justice for him and other children”, said the mother, Priscila Menezes, days after the incident, in an act on Copacabana Beach. “[Quero] that they [a PM] stop acting like this in communities, stop thinking that, in every favela, there are only criminals, it’s not like that, there are residents, there are families. Just like mine, my son had a dream of being a football player”, he said.
Initially, four police officers were accused of Thiago’s murder. Two of them, however, were released by the courts. The court understood that these PMs had not directly participated in the homicide.
